
Class 
Book. 



iiOs 



njj 



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Copyright N^____ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 




THE CURE ! 
THE BREADTH OF MY LOVE !" 



COLLIER 



The Education of the Young 
in Sex Hygiene 

A Textbook 
for Parents and Teachers 



By 

Robert N, Willson, M. D. 

Fellow of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. 

Director (with Dr. William E. Hughes) of the Philadelphia Hospital 

Postgraduate Course in Internal Medicine. 

Formerly Pathologist to the Presbyterian Hospital. 

Secretary, American Federation for Sex Hygiene. 
Secretary, Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Social Disease. 



1913 



Philadelphia 
U, S. A. 



^^ 



^r^ 



.>j^ 



Copyrighted 1913 

by 

Robert N, WiUson, IVI~ O, 



©Ci.A332667 



Dedicated tx) my Father, who by a clean life and manly bearing 
has inspired me and other men's sons to look high and to keep our 
feet out of the mire : to an ideal Mother, called home to a greater 
work, in my childhood: and to a wee Girl whose face is constantly 
present with me while fashioning the pages of this book. 



Contents 

Preface — Definition of Sex Hygiene — Its exactions, and returns upon 

the investment 7-9 

Qiapter I. Economic Relations of the Social Diseases 11-29 

Chapter II. The Boy — his need 30-37 

Chapter III. The Girl — her need 38-49 

Chapter IV. A Brief Talk on the Heredity of Health and Disease, 

and the Selfishness of Unhygiene 50-71 

Chapter V. What must both the Boy and Girl in due time be 

Taught? 72-95 

Chapter VI. What should the Girl be Taught ? 96-1 10 

Chapter VII. What must the Boy be Taught? 111-126 

Chapter VIII. When are the Boy and Girl to be Taught, by whom, 

and how ? 127-157 

Chapter IX. The Training of the Teacher 158-173 

Chapter X. A Talk with Boys on physical strength, hygiene of mind 

and body, character, and citizenship 174-189 

Chapter XI. A Talk with Girls on physiology, sex hygiene, and 

citizenship 190-204 

Chapter XII. What may be expected of the fully equipped Boy and 

Girl ? 205-21 1 

Chapter XIII. The Social Diseases 212-230 

Chapter XIV. The Eradication of the Social Diseases in large 

cities 231-242 

Chapter XV. Appendix — Educational Charts, relating to Heredity, 

the Social Diseases, and The Teaching of Sex Hygiene. 243-316 

lodex 317-319 



Illustrations 



Arranged, in the main, in sequence, with a view to their usefulness in 

teaching the significance of sex and heredity in plant 

and animal life. 

The Condition ! The Cure ! Frontispieces ^ 

Heredity Chart I2 ^^ 

Seedlings and nurseplants l6 "^ 

Spirochseta pallida of syphilis i%^ 

The gonococcus 2Q/ 

Fertilization of the plant ovules 20 ^ 

Stamens, pistils, cotyledons 22 vX 

Patients with locomotor ataxia 24 ^ 

Fertilization of the field lily 26 ^ 

A wild rose and bee 32 - 

A bee drinking the sage nectar 38 

The cornflower, its sex parts, insect visitors 44 ^ 

Dandelion, carnation, potato, orchid 52 - 

Union of the chromosomes 54 «/ 

Pollenization of the bee 56 ^ 

Development of the cell bodies 57 v^ 

The pea, and the hedge willow 58 ^ 

The law of dominance in fowls 60 ^ 

Hybridization in wheat 63 '/ 

Milkweed, sweetpea, capitula, and insects 64 

Sex organs of the toadflax and tulip 68 v 

The mistletoe and buttercup 74 1/ 

The aristolochia (Dutchman's pipe) 80*^ 

Butterflies and goldenrod 84 ^^ 

Mendel's law in draughtsmen and flowers 88 ^ 

Results of tight corset lacing 96 - 

The ovum, the spermatozoon, and heredity 98 

Normal ovary and tube, and infected organs 102 / 

The wedding of the vallisneria 112 V 

Anatomical chart, normal skeleton and muscles 118 ^^ 

Testicle and spermatozoa 122 and 123 v 



Normal and infected epididymis 124 

Single animal cell, the ameba 128 ^ 

Kinship between plant and animal reproduction 132 v 

Development of ants in the nest I34 *y 

Development of the potato bug 138^ 

Locusts, crickets, and grasshoppers 142 '^ 

Honey bee, bumble fee, and butterfly 146 ^J 

Development of the frog 148 */ 

Fertilization of the eggs of fish 152 \} 

Development of the chick and frog 158 v^ 

The first Pennsylvania sex hygiene exhibit 160 ^ 

Division of the cell nucleus 162 / 

The ostrich and nest 164 "^ 

Family responsibility. Orioles and bluejays 166 ^ 

Cell division. Fertilization of animal ova (eggs) 168 

Fertilization and development of the mouse's tz% 170^' 

Kangaroo, mother care of the young 174 y 

Developing ovum of the cat 178^ 

Developing ovum of the sheep 182 fe^ 

Developing ovum of the dog 184 i/ 

Developing ovum of the horse 186 ^ 

Motherhood 190 1/ 

Development of the human ovum 192 ^ 

Earliest visible development of the human ovum 194 V 

Further development of the human ovum 198 t 

Further development of the human ovum. Twins 200 tr 

Final development of the human ovum 202 ^^ 

The spirochssta pallida of syphilis 213 ^ 

Syphilitic babies 214 v 

Mucous patches of syphilis 215 v 

Normal and syphilitic brains 216 ^ 

Patients with paresis 217 jf 

Syphilitic tumor of the heart wall 219 ^ 

Aneurysm (syphilitic) in a child 221* 

Gonococcus heart disease 224 ^:- 

Blind boys and girls 226 y- 

Syphilitic liver, kidney, and spleen 232 v 

The spinal cord of locomotor ataxia 236 

The gonococcus 282 ^ 

The spirochaeta pallida of syphilis 301 



''Moral ideas rule the zvorld, hut at close range senses are 
imp eriotis/ ' — Emerson. 



Foreword 

I have worked and fought in the ranks nearly twenty years 
before venturing this book. It is not intended for boys or girls, or 
for children of any age whatsoever. It aims to reach and help 
the quiet, sane thinkers, especially the parents and teachers of chil- 
dren, with the suggestion that childlife has in the past suffered a 
woeful lack of comradeship in sex growth and experience. As a 
consequence an increasingly heavy and altogether unnecessary toll 
is being exacted in the form of the health and lives of our women 
and children. 

With a view to its serving as a stepping-stone to more thorough 
methods for the future, this is offered as a text-book for the instruc- 
tion of parents and teachers. Even the two chapters (X and XI) 
for the boy and girl are designed rather to suggest the manner of 
approach, than for actual placing in the hands of young people. 
That for Girls has, however, already been used extensively in 
pamphlet form among young girls, and, as its brief introductory 
note will show, has won their approval. In the same manner, if 
desired, the Talk with Boys may be placed without fear of harm 
in the hands of the future fathers at the age of fourteen. It is my 
conviction and has been my experience that both boys and girls 
are taught to better advantage by word of mouth and largely by 
object demonstration, than by the printed page, and that in this 
fashion the intended lessons are more surely learned. 

Sex hygiene, I take it, means sex health obtained and 
insured through the prevention of ignorance regarding the normal 
sex functions. In order to teach the normal, much that is unfortu- 
nate and repelling in the abnormal must be known by the parent 
teacher. Hence, I have attempted to show, and, I think, have fully 
established the need of instruction in the chapters that deal with 
the social conditions that have led up to the countrywide interest in 
sex hygiene as a vitally important subject for home and school 
teaching. 

The difficulty experienced in preparing a book that shall be 
useful for parents and school-teachers alike, for bachelor uncles 
and spinster aunts, for older sisters and interested friends in the 
absence of near relatives, is not one of omitting that which vv^ould 
offend, but of surely including that which will be found essential. 
There are many parents who neither appreciate the need for teaching 
young boys or girls the simple facts regarding their sex functions, 
nor are, as yet, themselves willing to learn. One charming mother 



Foreword. 

wrote to me in acknowledgment of a little pamphlet for girls, sent 
to her with the request for her perusal and, if possible, her approval, 
as follows: "I hope you will forgive me when I tell you that 
neither B. (her daughter) nor I have read it. The question of sex 
is, I think, a most unwise one for the mind to dwell upon and I 
think much harm is done by modern life in bringing before the 
mind perpetually the question of sex, a question which rarely 
presents itself to a healthy mind." Her viewpoint is slightly 
different from that of another mother who cordially welcomed 
"that statement of facts which so many girls are ignorant of and 
through ignorance are ruined for life. Being the mother of five 
daughters I wish to extend all the encouragement in my power 
to those who are seeking in the spirit of love, purity and tact to 
open the eyes of young girls to the dangers that surround so many 
of them." 

The first of these two mothers represents the last trace of the 
old regime. Its motto was 'T close my eyes to danger. I ignore 
its imminence. I do not want to see." The second mother has 
heard the cry of the thousands of children who have been and are 
being denied the right of sight, of health, of life itself, and springs 
to their relief. She forms the type that faces and corrects infamous 
conditions. "Being the mother of five daughters I wish to extend 
all encouragement !" What a refreshing thing it is for the pioneers 
in this field to realize that some of our women are awake and 
eager for the struggle toward a single standard of physical and 
moral health for their sons and daughters, even if only a few 
women and almost no men, as yet, are alive to the necessity. 

I am by no means unaware that I have more than once covered 
certain points, and have thereby laid myself open to the charge 
of repetition. I have ventured this otherwise inexcusable liberty 
with the deliberate purpose of rendering each teaching section of 
the book in itself complete. I have endeavored to make my exposi- 
tion of the subject simple, and practical, and plain. I have tried by 
means of illustrations as well as by the text to show that I am 
talking of things that are being accomplished, not of a projected 
experiment. Some of us have been studying the subject for years. 
We invite every man and woman to take some part in the great 
task of reminding the fathers and mothers of the future that God 
still reigns, but that he has provided natural laws, the following and 
observance of which are indispensable, if they are to result in 
moral and physical integrity and freedom from disease. As far 
as I can ascertain this is the first text-book upon sex hygiene to 
be presented to the American or any other public. After a few 
years one of a very different type must be prepared, which will 
enter into greater detail and amplitude with rejrard to sex relations 

8 



Foreword. 

than seems wise, even if justifiable, at this time. The cry today is 
for teachers, especially for parent-teachers of children. I make 
my attempt to fill one great need in teacher training with a full 
sense of the complete unfitness of any one man or woman to measure 
up to the opportunity. Nor is there a lack on my part of apprecia- 
tion of the weight of responsibility that rests upon him who points 
the way to matter and method of instruction, when such priceless 
interests hang in the balance. May each student of the subject 
enter upon this new field half as reverently, and half as confidently 
that, whatever our mistakes, the aim and purpose will be under- 
stood, and the faults eventually be made right! Still a third loyal 
mother wrote of the message to which reference has already been 
made: "If I were a girl, I should try to read this pamphlet in a 
spirit of deep thankfulness for the information it gives me and 
with a prayer in my heart for deliverance from evil in thought or 
word or deed." 

It is my fervent wish that this book may, through competent 
teachers, prove a means of safeguarding our boys and girls, and 
that these children as fathers and mothers may form an endless 
chain of happy, hearty, prudery-free citizens, who will begin in 
childhood's days the preparation of their own children for parental 
responsibilities in the future. If the intended message is gathered 
abundantly from its pages I shall consider my life already well 
spent. 

R. N. W. 
1708 Locust Street, 

Philadelphia, Pa. 



Chapter I. 



The Economic Relations of the Social Diseases. 

"During the year 1909, 9,557 stillbirths were reported in Penn- 
sylvania. Approximately 10,000 conceptions had progressed to 
that point where fetal life was established and subsequently lost 
through some interruptions in the normal progress of pregnancy. 
We have here not only an extensive waste of possible life, but as 
each pregnancy reduces the fecundity of females we have a serious 
depletion of our vital resources upon which we are dependent for 
a normal renewal of our species." 

I am quoting verbatim from the Pennsylvania Health Bulletin 
which is issued as the official organ of the State Department of 
Health over the name of the Commissioner. 

He proceeds, "When we further subdivide the total infant 
mortality (comprising 23 per cent, of the total deaths at all ages, 
parenthesis mine), we find that 67 per cent, of all the deaths occurred 
during the first six months of life ; by still further subdividing we find 
that 47 per cent, of all deaths occurred during the first three months, 
that 20 per cent, of deaths occurred during the first month, and 
by far the greatest proportion of these during the first week." 
And again, "Of the total deaths of infants in the registration area 
of the United States during 1908, 35.5 per cent, occurred from 
congenital malformation; prematurity; congenital debility, includ- 
ing atrophy, inanition, marasmus and the associated ill-defined 
diseases of infancy." 

He then asks the question, "Can we save such?" and follows 
it by another supposedly put by the social economist, "Are such 
as these worth the saving?" 

The above brings us as citizens immediately into relation 
with the social diseases. We may take as the theme of a very brief 
study of the economic relations of syphilis and gonococcus infec- 
tion (which we shall for convenience group under the term of 
social diseases), a rather different proposition from that of the 
Pennsylvania official, and yet one which may express his real 
meaning better than the form in which the question appears. 

Certainly we are in agreement that the citizen should be taught 
to place on a high plane the endeavor to head off the grim reaper 
from his annual march through the harvest of child lives. Only a 
hearty "yes" to his query "Are such as these worth saving?" will 

II 



Economic Relations. 

strike harmony with the parent chord in each and all. Even though 
by fad or fancy social economists, and thereby thoroughly in the 
prevailing mode, we are still intelligent and affectionate human 
beings. As put by the social economist, however, the answer to 
the question would seem to waver in doubt. 

Let me word the keynote of our discussion somewhat as fol- 
lows: Granted that 10,000 infant lives are annually begun and 
suddenly brought to a close before birth in Pennsylvania, to say 
nothing of the deaths following birth, are we deliberately over- 
looking or ignoring the cause of this holocaust? If eradicable, 
why are we not applying the hot iron, or the pick and shovel? If 
preventable, why such parley and delay? 

I realize as soon as I construct this formula, into what a 
labyrinth I am leading every man and woman that has the 
courage and the loyalty to home and nation to follow where I shall 
point the way. Each State the country over will, no doubt, in 
proportion to its population present figures and conditions not very 
dissimilar from those of Pennsylvania. Health authorities wherever 
met, if sufficiently roused to cause them to give any response 
whatsoever, are prone to run the gamut of misnomers for the 
causes of infant mortality, and tell you as we in Pennsylvania 
have just been told that "congenital malformation, congenital debility, 
including atrophy, inanition, marasmus and the associated ill-defined 
diseases of infancy" are at the bottom of this slaughter of unborn 
innocents. Could Voltaire lift his head from his coffin and hear 
this statement, he would assuredly feel that his book, "Candide the 
Optimist," had fallen far short of accompHshing its purpose. Ricord, 
the Frenchman of today, employs a different and more useful 
language. *'I am reproached," he says, "with seeing syphilis every- 
where." His national government publishes annual figures for 
digestion by the French people to the effect that 25,000 infants die 
in France each year as the result of this one dread disease, which 
is still officially non-existent in the United States of America, though 
just as certainly the active cause of an even greater multitude of 
wasted little lives in our far larger, and far more ostrichlike land. 
I again read carefully this Bulletin of the Health Department, and 
find mentioned, as the cause of 10,000 deaths of viable children, 
every possible makeshift for a causal influence except those that 
are concrete and real. Out of five and one-half pages, four include 
not a single mention of a definite causal disease under its proper 
title. Congenital debility has no definite significance, marasmus 
means still less, atrophy might in the mouth of a layman be con- 
stituted as a disease, but in such a connection the term should 
never emanate from a scientific laboratory, or from a State Health 
Department that is honestly endeavoring, as is that of Pennsylvania, 

12 



Economic Relations. 

to safeguard its people. The last page and a half (out of five and 
a half in all) mention a few of the conditions that contribute to 
the death toll. The winebibbing of the marriage feast is dwelt upon 
to the extent of a paragraph, while the social diseases, which must 
be regarded as serious factors in the long list of stillbirths and 
dead infants, are neither mentioned by name to an intelligent 
audience of some 8,000,000 people, nor hinted at under any recog- 
nizable term. If the percentage of stillbirths were added to that 
of deaths due to syphilis and gonococcus infection, within the first 
year of infancy, the total would be very large. Fournier reports a 
series of ninety women pregnant in the first year of their syphilis. 
Of the ninety pregnancies "fifty terminated in abortion or the birth 
of stillborn children, thirty-eight in the birth of children that quickly 
died, and two in the birth of children that survived." (''The Social 
Danger of Syphilis, 1899.") One is tempted to ask: "Why this 
American reticence, this overweening false modesty (if it be 
modesty), this hyperdelicacy of treatment, this official fingering 
instead of seizing boldly a condition and problem that call for the 
utmost frankness and despatch? The last census gave us the 
information that there were in the country 23,485,559 girls and 
wom.en sixteen old and upward. The new census wdll record a 
total far in excess of these figures. Ought or ought not these 
millions of possible mothers to know inteUigently and fully the facts 
regarding the thousands of infant deaths the country over, when 
every unprevented infant death is somewhat of a crime, to be laid 
at someone's door, especially in the light of the fact that nearly 
every infant life or death is in some measure within human preven- 
tion or control? If the life and health of her children, let us say 
for argument sake, depend upon her ability to choose a healthy, 
clean mate, should not the woman of this land have as her very 
birthright access to and intelligent instruction concerning these 
conditions and influences that imperil herself, her child, and the 
home. 

Should she understand that the average boy and man of today 
are through delinquency of the parent neither morally nor physi- 
cally clean? Should she also understand that there are clean boys 
and men? Should she be told that they who have sown their wild 
oats, however ignorantly innocent in the sowing, are presumably 
not clean, nor fit for marriage, and that such as these will blight 
her life and health almost as certainly as she takes them into her 
embrace, and that she will in direct consequence be likely to prove 
more of a curse than a benign influence to her children? Should 
she hear it said pointedly and well that the race of clear-eyed men 
and the congregation of still ignorant women (some regretfully 
devoid of information, many deliberately, prudishly unwilling to 

13 



Economic Relations. 

learn) are sanctioning by their inaction, if not actually condoning, 
the plying of their immoral trade by 500,000 and upward of public 
women, and the consignment of an extensive section of their town 
to the single and acknowledged purpose of maintaining the double 
standard of moral and physical health and (since, as a matter of 
course, these things go hand in hand) to the transmitting of moral, 
and no less certainly physical, contagious disease. 

I submit, simply as a basis for argument, an estimate of the 
number of public prostitutes and their earnings in this country. 

There is a type of man extant, usually devoid of real knowl- 
edge of the subject, that is fond of questioning the accuracy and 
value of these figures. I wish, therefore, to make it clear that they 
constitute a palpable and intentional underestimate. Such as it is, 
it is based upon the figures of the census, which record three cities 
of the first-class of over one million population. In these. New 
York, Chicago and Philadelphia, I estimate respectively about 
8,000,* 8,000* and 5,000 public prostitutes, in all, 21,000. There 
are five cities of the second-class (1,000,000-500,000) in each of 
which are estimated 1,500 pubHc women, except in the case of 
San Francisco, where the figure is placed at 5,000, making a total 
of 11,000. 

There are 11 cities in the third class (500,000-250,000) in each 
of which we may perhaps estimate 600 public prostitutes, totalling 
6,600. 

There are 31 cities of the fourth class (250,000-100,000) in 
each of which we estimate the presence of at least 400 public 
women, totalling 12,400. 

There are 59 cities of 100,000 to 50,000 population, in each of 
which we estimate about 350 public prostitutes, totalling 20,650. 

There are 120 cities of 50,000 to 25,000 population in each of 
which we estimate about 300 public prostitutes, totalling 36,000. 

There are 2176 cities below 25,000 population, in each of 
which we estimate the presence of 200, making a total of 435,200 
public women. 

Adding these figures together we obtain from data that must 
certainly be regarded as leaning far on the conservative side a total 
for the country's army of professional prostitutes of at least 544,350. 
Assume then for a moment that these 544,350 pubhc women earn 
on an average $500 annually, a figure far below that which is 
known to be the average among women of this type. The sum 
total from such a computation is $272,175,000. 

^Intentional underestimates 



Economic Relations, 

Ultraconservative Estimates of the Number of Public Female 
Prostitutes and Their Earnings. 

Cities 

New York, Chicago, 

Philadelphia, 
Five cities of the sec- 
ond class, plus San 

Francisco (5,000), 
Eleven cities of the 

third class, 
Thirty-one cities of 

the fourth class. 
Fifty-nine cities of the 

fifth class. 
One hundred and 

twenty cities of the 

sixth class, 300 36,000 

2176 cities of the 

class having under 

25,000 population, 200 435,200 



No. of public women 
in each 


Total 


Earnings 








Estimated 


8,000* 8,000* 


5,000 


21,000 


ultra- 
conservative 
average 


1,500 
600 




12,500 
6,600 


per year 
$500 


400 




12,400 




350 




20,650 





544,350 $272,175,000 

Estimating three clandestine prostitutes for every one of the 
544,350 public prostitutes, there is obtained a total of 1,633,050, 
probably a low estimate. 

Estimating the earnings of each of these as $250 per year, the 
total obtained is $408,262,500, probably a small portion of the money 
that actually changes hands in clandestine immorality. 

One of the daily journals has found occasion in its editorial 
column to call in question the accuracy of our statement that there 
are in this country well over 1,000,000 clandestine prostitutes, namely, 
those who earn only a portion of their income from immoral 
practices, and endeavor to maintain an outward appearance of 
respectability. No one has studied or investigated the conditions in 
the cities without being speedily convinced that for every public and 
professional prostitute there are from three to five or more so-called 
clandestinely immoral girls. No one can fix an accurate percentage 
covering the immoral element in any factory or mill or department- 
store population, or any correct number of the office workers or 
servants or waitresses, or of those who have nothing to do except 

♦These figures do not even approximate the actual number admitted by 
the police authorities. 

15 



Economic Relations. 

dress and idle, who accept a return for favors given either in the 
form of finery, or clothing, or of money itself. 

We need not estimate a very large percentage, therefore, of 
the girls of the myriads of mills and factories and department stores 
and offices throughout this broad land to total 1,000,000 clandestine 
prostitutes, or to figure up an estimate of earnings that is almost 
beyond belief. To one who really knows the 14,000,000 young men 
and the very many middle-aged and even old men, and the extent 
to which they prostitute womankind, such a total as 1,000,000 
clandestine prostitutes does not begin to correspond or to include 
the actual army of more sinned against than sinning girls and women 
who add to their oftentimes unlivable wages by immoral means, 
after once having been forced to yield to male obliquity and 
dishonor and to their own weakness in the face of an almost 
insurmountable temptation. 

If we go still further and name every immoral man a prostitute 
of either the public or clandestine type, we more than double our 
figures. 

What then ! Should or should not womankind know that the 
physical taints that blight the lives of the 500,000 public women of 
America have already marked and are every day sapping, through 
our boys, the vitality of the vast majority of our choicest American 
homes ; that our best as well as our worst boys, and many of those 
who might have been our best girls, through ignorance, lack of sane 
instruction, through bad example and ofttimes ridicule, have become 
and are every day becoming new foci for the spread of contagious 
disease to friends, neighbors, family, and to their yet unborn 
-# children? 

There is another side to the picture, that of the innocent por- 
tion of the public ! Should or should not both our growing boys and 
girls, and young men and women, hear that within the recent past 
there has been reported in the Journal of the American Medical 
Association an epidemic of infection of. young Philadelphia men 
and women, mere boys and girls, with syphilis, the origin being a 
primary sore on the lip of one of the young men? On a given 
evening he joined in kissing games at a party, and most of the 
infections could be traced to this occasion. A few evenings later at 
a similar entertainment he infected others, one of whom at least 
infected one young man. The French term these afflicted ones 
"avarie," the expression used for damaged goods. One of the most 
thrilling plays on the Parisian stage is that of Brieux, called "Les 
Avaries," portraying the social and economic dangers of this con- 
tagion. In England as well as in France, the year 19 10 recorded 
the lowest of all birthrates, very largely if not altogether due to the 
consequences of this disease. 

16 







1. A seedling feeding from a nurseplant. 

2. A vigorous adult plant nursing a single shoot of a seedling. 

3. A seedling being nourished by borrowed roots. 

4. A seedling, which has just been inarched upon a nurseplant. 

(William A. Du Puy.) 



Economic Relations. 

Let me restate our theme and unfold it in the light of a series 
of figures that bespeak the careful consideration of all serious- 
minded citizens. 

The History and Origin of the Social Diseases. 

Whatever doubt may exist with regard to the possibility of a 
clear understanding and control of the social diseases, there can be 
none with regard to their antiquity. Bodies recently uncovered in 
Egypt and in ancient Babylonia and Assyria have shown every indi- 
cation of syphilitic change. Solomon in his day was plain in his 
dealing with the subject. In speaking to his people of the conse- 
quences of licentiousness and of him who ventures into immorality, 
he says: 

"He knoweth not that the dead are there; 
That her guests are in the depths of Sheol." 

— Proverbs IX, j8. 

And again in referring to the public woman: 
**She hath cast down many wounded; 
Yea, all her slain are a mighty host. 
Her house is the way to Sheol, 
Going down to the chambers of death." 

— Proverbs VII, 26, 27. 

It is instructive to know that with many other facts that were 
of importance and value the danger and almost the existence of the 
social diseases were for centuries lost sight of, or at least ignored 
in medical and lay literature, until comparatively modern times. 
Columbus* sailors were for long considered to have brought these 
conditions from Haiti (Hispanola) in the new world to Spain in 
the old. We have in 1497 the record of a decree by James IV order- 
ing all persons suffering from syphilis to leave Edinburgh, on pain 
of being branded on the cheek. Nothing stayed the progress of the 
disease, however, which ran wild in the trail of the armies through 
Europe until every civilized land had begun to pay tribute. 

Salient Characteristics of the Social Diseases. 

It is little realized by an otherwise intelligent pedple that there 
exist in our midst two contagious diseases, claiming thousands of 
victims every year, and yet officially ignored by the medical and civil 
authorities of nation, state, and municipality. The public has been 
sedulously screened from any and all information that would enable 
it to protect itself, and only within the last few years has there been 
any considerable sanction of the attempt to inform that public in 
such a manner that it might be aroused to institute measures to 

17 



A 



Economic Relations. 

safeguard at least its women and children. Today the vast 
majority of our people are ignorant of the fact that syphilis and 
gonococcus disease not only are infections caused by germ forms, 
but that they are transmitted exactly as are tuberculosis, typhoid 



[^■"-.i ;.-'-^« ."-"1: <'»' i^v!^-^ 



The spirochaeta pallida, the spiral germ that causes syphilis. 
(Schaudinn.) 

fever, and pneumonia. Still less do they know regarding the course 
of these diseases and their difficulty of cure. It is inconceivable to 
many men and women that the majority of our boys and young 
men have suffered from and are experiencing these diseases, and 
that they require months and oftentimes years to effect a cure ; that 
even when all symptoms have receded there is no certainty of cure ; 
that the sequelae of these two entirely distinct and dissimilar diseases 
may include the danger or the destruction of every organ and tissue 
in the body, including the heart, the brain, the spinal cord, the bones, 
the eye, and above all the arteries and veins, which furnish the blood 
to the tissues of the body. The populace exclaims, and naturally, 
"How can these things be, and we ignorant of them?" 

Before me lies a letter, dated April, 191 1, from one of the 
country's captains of industry and finance, who states, "I have your 
letter in regard to a matter of which I fortunately know nothing 
and desire to know nothing further than that the diseases your 
society hopes to prevent are penalties imposed by the Creator for a 
violation of a law of God and man. . . . There is but one 
way, primarily, the disease can be communicated, and as I under- 
stand it, only one way to escape the penalty. God help the innocent 
women and children who may suffer!" 

He signs himself "Yours very truly," and sends no contribution 
to assist in the protection of those whom he hopes God may help, 
nor for the informing of the public regarding the measures neces- 
sary to the prevention of these conditions. He does not know and 
does not want to know the myriad of baby-deaths, the army of inno- 

18 



f 



Economic Relations. 

cent, infected wives, the battalions of threatened boys who might 
be safeguarded with clean knowledge offered in time, of the ever- 
changing and interchanging multitudes of immoral public women, the 
vast majority of them at one time clean, innocent girls, the great 
number under twenty-one years of age, all diseased or shortly to be 
infected, and every mother's daughter of them in the first instance 
dishonored and diseased by some boy or man. He speaks as a mon- 
ument of selfishness, not even as a human being, much less as an 
American citizen ! Should the public be permitted to realize that 
syphilis is not merely a skin eruption or a superficial sore, but a 
virulent systemic infection, than which no other is so difficult of 
cure, and none requires for its eradication a longer passage of time ? 
Has it a right to demand instruction regarding the many thousands 
of infected sufferers supposedly intermingling in the homes and lives 
in every large city, men and women, boys and girls, children and 
infants, doctors, lawyers, clergymen, husbands, wives, school-chil- 
dren, manufacturers, tradesmen, provisioners, marketmen, waiters, 
cooks, nursery maids? There would seem to be no doubt that the 
public has an inherent right to this knowledge ; and yet this capitalist 
and man of affairs does not know and does not want to know ! Is 
he an individual or a type? And if the latter, is he a limited type, 
or does he represent this body politic? Is he simply an unfortunate 
remnant of the old code, forsaken and deserted by contemporaries 
and descendants alike? Or is he fairly representative of public sen- 
timent as it exists today? Is the general attitude of the people one 
of not only contented, but of studied and deliberate ignorance for 
an object, forsooth? The situation as illumined, or rather 
beshadowed, by this votary of fatalism with regard to his own and 
the nation's danger from infectious disease is an extremely interest- 
ing one. What influence or prejudice or selfishness lies behind 
and beneath this type of moral and civic apathy? What has closed 
the heart and hand and purse that so readily opened to the call of 
tuberculosis, plague, yellow fever, and even typhoid? Has he as an 
individual member of the people the right to remain ignorant? Do 
the rich escape the ravages of social disease? Rather are the richest 
and the poorest strata of society the two most thoroughly saturated 
with these poisons. Perhaps the poor suffer more severely, but it 
is only because they are of low vitality at the start, and because 
they are the constant prey of the infected rich. Certain it is that 
few of their homes escape scarring in some fashion and degree. 
Moreover, "^hat home circle and those parents that are most confi- 
dent of the moral and physical safety of their children are the very 
ones whom destiny seems to choose to point the lesson this nation 
is learning so rapidly and at such bitter cost. Surely it is recognized 
by few that the infections of innocent women and children put- 

19 



Economic Relations. 

number as five to one those springing directly from wrongdoing 
and shame. No man Hves unto himself, and no man when once 
infected can altogether die unto himself, in so far as his body is still 
capable of doing harm. Probably there never was established a 
focus of social disease in human form that did not beget others of 
its kind, some of a criminal nature to be sure, the vast majority 
altogether innocent and oftentimes in persons who are ignorant 
of the existence of such conditions and of danger therefrom. 
What is to be the outcome, and what already is the fruit born of this 
endlessly reproductive chain? 

The Relation of the Social Diseases to the Individual. 

What would be a justifiable as well as an intelligently con- 
scientious reply to such a question as the following, put by an 
interested father or mother of the average boy, going out in a few 
days into business or into professional Hfe? "Is he likely to con- 
tract or escape infection by social disease?" 

Perhaps we are interrogated by the parents of an innocent 
young girl, beautiful perhaps, marriageable, and destined to marry 
(if marry she w^ill — for there are few women indeed who need 
maintain the moral and physical independence of single life one day 
longer than they desire), interrogated, I say, by some such query 
as this: **Will our daughter be likely or unlikely to escape a crip- 
pling and unsexing operation within the first two years of her mar- 







The gonococcus, the cause of gonococcus disease in men, 
children. (Veit.) 



women and 



ried life?" The reply to such questions as these must be well con- 
sidered before, not after, the boy or girl bark be trusted to the 
current of life's ocean. Surely it is because of natural animal 



20 




^^^ 







Upper — a pistil, surrounded with stamens, and bearing a number of 

pollen grains, from which tubes are shooting down to the 

ovules below. 

Middle centre — the germinal tube magnified. Note the male CP) and 

the female (E) elements. 
Lower — various forms of stamens and pistils. (Kerner.). 



Economic Relations. 

impulses, their hunger for and lack of intelligent home instruction, 
their entire lack of self-control and safeguarding at a time in which 
the power of self-government is most essential, bad example, the 
only too ubiquitous temptation, curiosity, ridicule, and a hundred 
other influences, — because of these things the great majority of 
boys indulge in illicit immorality, and the majority suffer from the 
inevitable physical infections that are part and parcel of sexual 
license. And yet the girl's safety depends on him! If infected will 
he recover? Will he infect others? What do we hear of the blind 
asylums, 20 per cent, of whose inmates are there because of gonococ- 
cus infection from the mother; of the insane asylums with 85 per 
cent, and upwards of the cases of paresis due to syphilis ; and over in 
the nervous wards a very like percentage of cases of locomotor 
ataxia due to the same disease ? There are more than 200,000 insane 
persons in the United States of whom very many owe their mental 
state to syphilis. What shall we say of the children's wards in the 
hospitals, never free from little children who are infected with 
venereal disease; of the general wards of the hospitals, full of the 
debilities, termed with various names, but actually dependent upon 
and growing out of the two infections, syphilis and gonococcemia ? 
We have not yet mentioned the marasmus, the idiocies, the apo- 
plexies, the epilepsies, the club feet, the hare lips, the maimed and 
crippled special senses! 

It is certain that .the great number of our boys will some day 
have the desire and all but a very few will marry. Medical experi- 
ence has shown very clearly that these supposedly cured boys very 
often infect their innocent wives. There can be little criticism of 
the statement that the thousands of innocent wdves that reach the 
operating table and some of them the coffin as the result of the 
ignorant and careless exposure of their husbands to moral and 
physical contamination before they have reached a marriageable 
age — that these women are the real white slaves of our land ! 
The injustice of this sacrifice does not cease even with the woman's 
physical harm. As a rule she never learns the character of her 
affliction nor the origin of her misfortune, and it may be that neither 
she nor her husband traces it to its fundamental cause, the lack of 
sane instruction while she and he were children in their respective 
homes. The children born to them, begin, as a consequence, the 
same weary round of questions asked and allowed to remain 
unanswered, of sex promptings and curiosities and temptations that 
result in the same exposure, and the same catastrophies that have 
at last brought the world to a horror-stricken study of the subject 
and to a partial realization of the havoc wrought by past ignorance 
and neglect. 

There is still a tiny individual whom we are overlooking, whose 



Economic Relations. 

claims must be pressed as never before. On the infant and child 
and upon the unborn babe fall, heaviest of all, the consequences of 
social disease. 

Many thousands of stillbirths and infant deaths annually 
result in this country, just as abroad, from syphiHs alone. Few accu- 
rate figures are to be had. Easily half of all the abortions and mis- 
carriages are the direct result of one or other of the two social dis- 
eases, syphilis and gonococcus infection. No estimate can be made 
of the waste of child life in such a country as this. The problem 
becomes no less complicated when it is realized that more than half 
of all the sterility among men and women is due to these infections 
or to their consequences upon the husband, oftentimes transmitted 
by him to his wife. 

Thus boy and girl, husband and wife, and tiny child (and of 
all these the innocent preferred by the visitation of misfortune 
before the guilty), each and every one, though indispensable to the 
nation's welfare, is subjected to influences that should not be allowed 
to exist longer by one moment than is necessary to bring the matter 
of their existence and virulence to the attention of an intelligent 
and patriotic people. These things, in the language of the boy and 
girl, "go without saying"; though in spite of this fact, they have 
also gone for many a year without any great measure of attention. 

The Relation of the Social Diseases to the Home. 

The relation of the social diseases to the home has been destruc- 
tive enough in the past. When the facts are fully appreciated 
by the women as well as by the men, it seems likely that many a 
so-called home will receive the stab that will rid it of the power 
of existence. The vital question is ''knowing this inevitable 
result, is intelligent knowledge worth while?" There can be only 
one reply: "Better no marriage, than disease and death of the 
innocent as its outcome! Better no home, than one cursed with 
crippling disease!" 

Far more often than is realized divorce and separation of 
husband and wife and the rupture of the home circle depend upon 
the infection of the wife and child by the father; far more 
rarely upon the contamination of the husband by an unfaithful and 
infected wife. Many more instances exist in which conditions are 
such, as the result of the infection of the mother of the home, as 
to become almost intolerable, and yet the woman is silent under her 
burden of wrong and shame. This is by no means a new story with 
the doctor. Nearly every day brings some new problem of this 
nature to his attention. More and more frequently cases are finding 
their way into the lawyer's office as the relation of cause and eflfect 
is gradually becoming understood and appreciated by the main 

22 






1. ^"arioiis forms of stamens and pistils. 

2. Contrivances for insuring the oollenization of insects. 

3. Cotyledons (seed leaves). (Kerner.) 



Economic Relations. 

victim, womankind. 

Even the infant when born with one of these infections at once 
assumes the role of an infecting focus to all around. Many 
instances are on record in which a tiny babe has infected a whole 
family with the syphilis w^hich it innocently, but just as virulently, 
bore. 

Only a few^ weeks ago was published in the medical journals 
another instance of the infection of a grandmother by the tiny 
granddaughter fondled in her arms. It would seem almost mirac- 
ulous in the face of such conditions as these, that there could still 
exist such an institution as a home. In point of fact America sur- 
passes all other countries in her number of divorces. Here and 
abroad, there is no lack of marital separations based simply and 
solely upon an infidelity that implies also the presence of its boon 
companion, social disease. 

The Relation of the Social Diseases and the Body Politic. 

It is of importance for us to consider the relation of the social 
diseases to America at large. Is she appreciably a sufferer from 
the ravages of syphilis and gonococcus disease? A few inquiries 
tell the tale. We are officially informed that in our army of about 
60,000 m.en not less than 20 per cent, of all upon the sick list 
are instances of venereal infection. During ten years the average 
admission rate for venereal infection has varied between 146.24 per 
1000 to 200 per 1000, or one soldier per five in each year's record. 
In 1908 the official report estimates the constant loss of efficiency 
owing to syphilis and gonococcus infection at about "the effective 
strength of a regiment." General Van R. Hoff of the army medical 
service reminds us that 73,382 cases of syphilis were reported 
among the white troops of the Union army in the Civil War. The 
army, on its return from Cuba and the Philippines, set in motion 
a new wave of venereal infection. "For the navy and marine 
corps," writes Surgeon Gates, "the admission to the sick list for 
gonorrhea since 1906 have stood first in point of frequency with 
from 2,085 to 3,015 cases, but these figures greatly understate its 
prevalence, for there was no record of patients not actually dis- 
abled. Admission for record of all cases is now required and the 
figures for 1909, for the first time in our history, are approximately 
accurate, and show an increase of 5,861. This compares with total 
admissions for all causes of 38,735 in an average strength of 55, 550, 
or 105.5 P^^ T,ooo out of the total for all causes of 697.29 per 1,000. 
For all venereal diseases the primary admission ratio was 199.17 
per 1,000." Preventive measures have all signally failed. The 
so-called prophylactic or preventive treatment of those intentionally 

23 



Economic Relations. 



running the risk of infection has in the Army reduced the incidence 
of venereal disease in ten years just 5 per 1,000 of mean strength. 
In 1902 the incidence was 168.08 per 1,000. In 191 1 it was 163.49. 
As illuminating these figures I might also state that in the year fol- 
lowing the withdrawal of beer from the canteen in the Army there 
was (by official figures) a fall of the incidence from 155 to 150: 
while in the year of the original establishment of the canteen with 
beer the incidence rose among the troops in the country from 81 to 
138 per 1,000. 

In the Public Health and Marine Hospital service about 53,000 
patients have been treated annually, totaling about 1,300,000 in the 
last 20 years. Of these, 106,090 were cases of syphilis in some one 
of its stages, 4,420 constituting the average per year. There were 
117.336 cases of gonorrhea, with an annual average of 4,889 cases. 




Patients with locomotor ataxia, 75 per cent, and upwards of all cases of 
which are the result of syphilis. (Original.) 

The total number of instances of venereal disease treated was 
263,345, giving an annual average of 10,969 cases. These figures 



Economic Relations. 

illustrate an average of acute venereal infection, totaling 20.5 per 
cent, of the entire number of patients treated for all ailments 
(McCaskey). 

In civil life an accurate estimate of the frequency of 
venereal disease is altogether impossible. In the Philadelphia Hos- 
pital, the only institution in Pennsylvania that will admit the acute 
forms of syphilis and gonococcus infection as such, there are 
annually treated about i,4CX) men, and about 800 to 1,000 women. 
The general wards are overrun with cases of venereal disease in its 
chronic forms, and appearing intercurrent with other infections and 
ailments. No public records are kept, no statistics bearing upon the 
community at large are available. Various individuals and more 
than one commission have studied the prevalence of syphilis and 
gonococcus infection throughout the country. Their reports, based 
always upon general estimates, never upon accurate data, have 
varied between 500,000 and 2,500,000 cases of syphilis constantly 
existing among the populace of the United States ; also a vast num- 
ber of new infections each year. For every case of recognized 
syphilis it may be estimated that there are several cases of gonococ- 
cus disease (from 4 to 10). This by no means pictures the actual 
relative frequency of the two diseases. There is needed merely the 
possibility, if not the certainty, that syphilis is often an incurable 
disease to indicate the inaccuracy of any such estimates as the fore- 
going, since the multiplication of these figures in complex propor- 
tion, providing even a few cases have not been cured, but have con- 
tinued infecting others (let us say even in the last 10 years), would 
create a series beyond computation. Working in and out of the 
figures bearing upon gonococcus infection there are a similar inac- 
curacy and a lack of data that prevent careful estimate and 
calculation. 

Every industrial organization such as a mill, factory, depart- 
ment store, and every office force contributes during the year to the 
total of expenditure and waste involved in the extravagance of two 
preventable and unnecessary diseases. Hard-earned pittances, the 
regulation weekly wage, comfortable salaries, fat incomes, hand- 
some fortunes, one and all sapped and depleted every year by the 
unappreciated cost of immorality and of its consequences, syphilis and 
gonococcus disease. Boys of fourteen and fifteen, young men and 
old. girls and young women in all classes of society, public women 
in houses, street walkers, the great army of clandestinely immoral 
girls, all consult the physician, and all express surprise and dismay 
over the outcome, the possibility of which was perhaps known and 
even dreaded, but never regarded as an imminent thing. Doctors to 
be consulted, surgeons to be interviewed, medicines to be bought, 
wages and that still more valuable asset, time, thrown away, abil- 



Economic Relations. 

ities, mentalities, physical stamina, temporarily embarassed or per- 
manently set aside, — who can fathom or figure the mountain of 
prodigality and expenditure consequent upon and involved in the 
diseases against which Solomon warned the Jewish people ! 

Estimate the cost of treatment of a single case of gonococcus 
infection at the money value of $50 (a figure far below the actual 
average for the usual six weeks' attention), and recall that there 
are about 14,000,000 boys and young men in the country, a 
considerable percentage of whom are infected annually, and we 
have a serious money loss recorded against unnecessary waste. Esti- 
mate the expense of the pelvic operations upon womankind, due to 
infections by husbands and promiscuous lovers, at from $50 to $500 
or $1,000 each, and calculate as many as you please of such opera- 
tions per year. The figuring will probably be well within correct 
limits and there will be noted a great amount of money deliberately 
thrown into the ever greedy mouth of dissipation and its results. 
Estimate the cost of maintenance of the venereal wards in the Phil- 
adelphia Hospital alone, and we have an item of expense that could 
well be applied to other and better interests, were it itemized on 
another side of the ledger. Even now we have not included the 
treatment of the acute and chronic eye infections, the support of 
our blind asylums, the cost of the divorce courts, and the cost of 
burial of the thousands of tiny children who are born dead or about 
to die. The two hundred thousand insane cost this country $50,- 
000,000 every year, -and a large percentage of these cases are the 
outcroppings of one social disease. 

No reference has been made to the new wave of venereal 
infection brought to this country each year from the continent, 
lest it carry us too far afield. None the less it should be noted that 
last year 223,453 immigrants came from Italy alone, 123,348 from 
Poland, 84,000 Jews, 71,000 Germans, 52,000 Scandinavians, and 
many others from smaller states throughout Europe, not one of 
the entire number having been examined for the presence of 
venereal disease, and all admitted through a wide open physical 
gate. 

Few outside the medical profession realize the imminence 
of danger from the colored race, especially that portion of 
it which lives in the cities and towns, saturated as it is with both 
syphilis and gonococcus infection, and oftentimes tuberculosis as 
well. Not only are the colored people peculiarly susceptible to these 
infections, but they are seriously handicapped in obtaming eflfective 
treatment, owing to contracted means, and equally because of a 
lack of moral sense and realization of their obligation to the public 
to get well by the speediest possible route. 

The money cost is, however, not the main consideration. It is 

26 




The field lily, being fertilized by the moth. Note the section of the 
style, and the ovules awaiting impregnation. Reproduction of a 
German wall chart. 



Economic Relations. 

of no small moment that our boys and men should understand the 
fearful toll that is being paid for illicit sexual indulgence in tertns 
of the health and lives of the women and children. When the men 
know and realize the moral and physical injustice that is being done 
those whom they pretend (I fear only pretend as yet) to prefer 
to themselves in all things, then the continuance of this naiional 
scourge, this crime of unnecessary moral and physical disease, must 
needs appear all the more horrid, and the shame of it cry all the 
more loudly for relief. 

We cannot afford to breed into men and fatliers another gen- 
eration of boys who know the facts concerning social disease and 
yet continue the conditions that are resulting here, as they are in 
France, in an annual lowering of the birth rate, and a progressive 
elevation of the death rate. This will result only too surely in the 
ruin of the American people. Nor will it be possible to tolerate a 
race of women who, once having learned the reason of their sex 
subjection and sex invalidism, continue to submit to a double stan- 
dard of moral and physical health, altogether different for them- 
selves and for the men. Such conditions as have existed in the 
darkness of ignorance ought to be impossible as soon as both sexes 
have light ; or the converse will immediately become true, that, once 
the Creator is convinced that man and womankind desire a contin- 
uance of self-inflicted immorality and disease. He will doubtless 
speed their desire, and through its fruition, wreak on them the full 
development of their own misdem.eanor, and speedily blot them 
from the fairest spot on the earth ! 

The Method of Control. 

The very practical question therefore presents itself to the plain 
citizen, especially to the father and mother of the home and to the 
physician and clergyman as confidantes of the home, Can the social 
diseases be brought under control, and how? 

Only the born pessimist will answer, no. No one who has 
watched the growth of the little movement, no bigger than a man's 
hand, launched a few years since in the hope of educating the 
American people into respect for its ow^n talents and possessions ; 
no one who has seen the many encouraging signs, of the past year 
especially, will fail with an affirmative reply. The great obstacle 
has been and still is the wall of false modesty that has stood 
between the evil and its cure. That wall is so rapidly melting away 
that it seems impossible to realize how insurmountable it once 
appeared. The year now passing has witnessed an interest in the sub- 
ject of sex hygiene that has been a revelation to the most optimistic 
worker in the field. In the recent International Congress on 

27 



Economic Relations. 

Hygiene, held in Washington, the American Federation for Sex 
Hygiene presented the most extensive and by all odds the most 
instructive of the many exhibits, one which was awarded a certificate 
of superior merit. Tlie National Federation of Women's Clubs 
and the National Congress of Mothers, representative of millions 
of American mothers, have both indicated sex hygiene as one of the 
essential features of the year's study and discussion. In the near 
future the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Social Dis- 
ease, numbering i,8oo members, will place a salaried Secretary in the 
field. From the Atlantic to the Pacific the people are being organ- 
ized and educated in the facts and figures and relations of social 
disease. Children are being taught sex hygiene in classes by the 
few available trained teachers, also in several cities in the public 
and private schools, and in the Sunday Schools through weekday 
classes and through literature, also in the gymnasium. The writer 
recently spoke at a meeting of the high school teachers of his city 
and found not only that the teachers are ready to prepare them- 
selves to teach the moment the Department of Health shows itself 
progressive enough to offer this essential opportunity to the school 
children of Philadelphia, but it was evident from statements made 
in the discussion that in many of the schools the teachers are already 
feeling their way on their own initiative, prompted by the need as it 
has become apparent in daily contact with the child. There are 
today very few American colleges or universities that fail to give 
at least some definite annual instruction to the incoming classes in 
the matter of personal hygiene. The college student is reached too 
late with this information in the great majority of instances; yet, 
late teaching would appear to be better than none. 

Five states have spread on their statute books laws providing 
for the withholding of the license to marry until a physician's cer- 
tificate shall have been submitted, witnessing the applicant's free- 
dom from transmissible disease. More than one state, very recently 
California, and even New York City in a restricted measure, have 
placed syphilis and gonococcus infection upon the list of reportable 
diseases, requiring the physician in charge to register the patient by 
number, not by name, thus compeUing treatment and cure when 
possible, yet shielding the patient from publicity, and preventing the 
tendency to forego treatment. Official reglementation of prostitu- 
tion has resulted, wherever tried, in an admitted failure. Both here 
and abroad it has been shown that of the average one hundred 
public women examined by the finer laboratory tests for the pres- 
ence of syphilis, from eighty to ninety were syphilitic, though only 
a few showed open manifestations of the disease. 

The conclusion reached everywhere is that it is the rarest 
exception for the immoral woman to escape infection longer than the 



Economic Relations. 

first brief time of her exposure, and that the people should know 
this fact. The European countries are one by one relinquishing 
police supervision, as well as the attempt at medical examination 
and licensing of prostitutes, on the ground that under this regime 
both prostitution and the spread of the social diseases have been 
furthered rather than brought under control. 

Yet the ground has only been broken. The people are only half 
awake. The male sex not only is reluctant to alter the existing state 
of affairs, but stands in large part in active opposition, realizing as it 
already does that the eradication of the social diseases calls for noth- 
ing short of the establishment and the enforcement of a single 
standard of moral and physical health for the two sexes. Every 
man, woman, and developing child must be educated in some part of 
this knowledge. Vulgarity and filth will not find room in the mind 
and heart of the boy and girl that have been sanely, as well as 
reverently, educated in the home. Deprived of instruction in clean 
essentials, he and she will not fail to acquire false knowledge 
regarding those essentials that is as vicious as it is inaccurate and 
unscientific. The child's understanding will not long remain a 
blank. It is of vital importance that if anything is to be inscribed, 
clean things should very early there be written. 



29 



Chapter II 



The Boy and His Need. 

There is only one other stock in trade — the girl — as promising 
of development as the average boy ! There is none so certain of 
deterioration under mishandling! The generation of fathers and 
mothers now nearly underground has unwittingly neglected and 
tolerated him during boytime until by the grace of God he has 
expanded into a useful citizen, or, because of their failure to assist 
Almighty Power in equipping and protecting him, he has developed 
into a focus of moral and physical harm to the community. 

He has grown, if at all, by divine right and guidance; not to 
any great extent as the result of human tilling of the soil, and still 
less through thoughtful planting. His life has simply unfolded into 
usefulness and gentility, or knavedom and shame, into a childhood 
of fortune rather than one of natural outgrowth from an intelligent 
and consecrated home. 

Awake at last, the present generation is regarding the boy 
problem with intense, surprised interest, and somewhat of dism.ay. 
Through nineteen centuries the world has for the most part slum- 
bered with respect to the boy. Meantime there has developed a 
being, largely animal, yet in full possession of a sensitive soul. This 
paradox is calling for a judicious, not less than for an affectionate 
study from the cradle to the grave. 

For the first time in modern history is being realized the boy's 
import as the embryo good or bad citizen, as the central and acti- 
vating force of a future hell or home. At the best his environment 
will not be overhelpful until society lends a hand. No sooner grad- 
uated from the nursing bottle than he must be warned from another 
vial that is gradually being discarded even by the physician in his 
knowledge of its certain harm. The boy has scarce learned to 
breathe deep in God's fresh air, when he must needs witness his 
father surcharging with smoke and narcotic impurity that atmos- 
phere which belongs by birthright not to him, but to his fellow- 
passengers along life's highway. His mother has reared him for 
a time in the sweet sleep of innocent ignorance, only that he may 
be rudely awakened by the obscenity and perverted half knowledge 
of some other mother's boy, perhaps a little more ignorant and 
neglected. 

A bundle of live wires, the boy freely and indiscriminately 
invites and transmits the best and worst influences that come into his 

30 



The Boy and His Need. 

circuit. It is worthy of note that he is certain to be a positive force 
for good or evil. Comes good first into his Hfe, good may reign! 
Comes evil, whether first or last, a struggle must ensue that will 
terminate favorably when, and only when, home influences and home 
ideals, and sometimes the love of a woman, weigh heavily in the 
scale ! 

It would seem that the boy merits our attention, if for no 
other reason, in order that from him may be developed the fullest 
economic gain, and the minimal civic harm! 

What of the individual boy? 

By nature, or birth, or habit, we find him now frank and open, 
now sullen and unapproachable. He may be confiding or reticent, 
afifectionate or distant, cordial or repellant. Whatever his type, let 
us take it for granted that there is in every boy that something which 
is peculiar to him, that interest which, if discovered, will enable him 
to be reached and to be won for good or evil. The world may rest 
assured that boyho®d is the time during which the services of the 
man are secured or lost to his fellow-men. No matter how perverse 
the material at the beginning, no matter how perverted the result 
up to the time of the experiment, it may be looked upon as certain 
that there is the possibility of a good and useful citizen in every 
physically healthy, and in many an unhealthy boy. How to culti- 
vate, how to nourish, how to enrich, how to train and direct the 
growth of his ten talents in order to bring them to generous 
increase — these are questions that must be answered and problems 
that must be solved on the basis of a careful home study of the 
individual boy. No two boys resemble one another beneath the 
surface, and no two will thrive and develop under the same method 
of cultivation. 

With the Oriental let us simply lay down as the ground prin- 
ciple of our campaign in the interest of the coming generation of 
boys the quaint truism, **In everj^ man's breast will be found a lotos 
blossom." 

Far more truly and often does it bloom fresh and fragrant in 
the bosom of the boy ! It needs light and fresh air ! 

There exists no more careless time, none more spontaneous nor 
guileless, none more impressionable, than boyhood! Never again 
will he be so susceptible to the influences that sink deep, perhaps 
out of sight for a time. Only those who have enjoyed the comrade- 
ship of many boys, invited and preserved inviolate their confidences, 
and been trusted by them, can learn that seemingly innocent factors 
may make for their ultimate good or harm. Few understand the 
subtle early influences that determine the poise of the future head 
of a home ! Fewer still realize that these influences are most potent 
while the father is yet a boy ! Perhaps no one outside of mother- 

31 



The Boy and His Need. 

dom understands the boy's inherent and native loyalty to his mother 
and to womankind. It is the altered, denatured boy that proves 
untrue to her faith in him. 

Why not act on the hint furnished by the boy himself, and 
educate him to be the champion and protector of the women of the 
home? 

This task will devolve not only upon the fathers, but upon all 
women, and especially upon the mothers of the land. Why not 
demand of him in boyhood intelligent obedience to the ideals that 
you desire lived out in the man? Equip him with the dignity of 
accurate knowledge sufficient to protect him until he can safeguard 
you ! Then trust him, and by so doing afford him the opportunity 
to show womankind that he has it in him to be worthy of her ! You 
will thus enable him, without enforcing the necessity of sad personal 
experience, to teach the coming generations that he lives best for 
God and country who lives true to the wife and home. In at least 
two particulars every boy is a true son of Adam. By birthright he 
is in possession of an inquiring mind, and generally he seeks, 
obtains, and eats with a zest of some form of forbidden fruit. His 
training in self-indulgence commences with the peremptory and 
arbitrary midnight emptying of his mother's breast; consequently 
his time of temptation begins with babyhood and endures into old 
age. Steeped and encouraged in childhood's imperious sway, the 
twentieth century infant reaps an unjustifiable harvest if his moral 
and physical barns in after years swell with a wholesome plenty of 
health and vigor. In numbers he is a slumbering, potent force! 
There are 15, 000,000 of him, constantly marching toward manhood 
and citizenship in this country alone. Eight hundred thousand boys 
come to maturity every year! Every one is born a male animal, 
gifted by the Author of Life with the germ of the sacred power 
of begetting children born in His image. The call to this power 
speaks in the boy so early that it startles him. It finds him fatally 
Ignorant of its meaning. He turns this way and that for guidance 
and obtains anything but satisfaction in the half amused, half scan- 
dalized confusion of parents and neighbors over his ingenuous 
queries. His training consists of a stuffing process that results too 
often in an artificial rather than a natural boy, if anything survives 
in the form of a boy at all. It is well described in a doggerel that 
appeared not long since in one of the current journals. Like 
many doggerels this one carries a lesson, as well as a gleam of 
humor. 

''Hurry the baby as fast as you can, 
Hurry him, worry him, make him a man. 
Off with his baby clothes, get him in pants, 
Feed him on brain foods and make him advance. 

> 32 ^ 




A wild rose visited by a bee. The stamens, pistils, the ovary (sectioned), 

and the ovules, are all in plain sight. All await the message 

from the pollen grains on the surface of the pistils. 

Reproduction of a German wall chart. 



The Boy and His Need. 

Hustle him, soon as he's able to walk, 
Into a grammar school ; cram him with talk, 
Fill his poor head full of figures and facts, 
Keep on a- jamming them in till it cracks. 

Once boys grew up at a rational rate, 

Now we develop a man while you wait. 

Rush him through college, compel him to grab 

Of every known subject a dip and a dab. 

Get him in business, and after the cash, 

All by the time he can grow a mustache. 

Let him forget he was ever a boy : 

Make gold his god and its jingle his joy. 

Keep him a-hustling and clear out of breath 

Until he wins — nervous prostration and death." 

If he be a natural boy curiosity is his dominating trait. Through 
it Mother Nature prompts him to institute original investigation. 
Roy time is by all odds her best opportunity to teach, and his to 
learn. Boylike his questions are directed at the center of the target. 
If they tend along sex lines they will open up interrogations that 
impinge upon a world of happiness, or an eternity of gloom. His 
later and more mature bearing on such questions as involve moral 
arid physical health will be simply and certainly an expression of the 
<1evelopment of conclusions formulated while a boy. The collective 
influence of his opinions and actions will some day activate or 
blanket the conscience of the community. From the standpoint of 
the nation's future weal or woe boyhood, we must recognize and 
admit, is a critical period, and the sane development of the boy an 
object deserving of attention. On no side has this embryo citizen 
been more studiously neglected than in the matter of sex hygiene. 

In no direction does the national health need more active con- 
servation. As the result of total ignorance, or of a vicious and vul- 
gar half-knowledge obtained from boy-companion, stableman, or 
maid, our boys have been encouraged by neglect to expose them- 
selves to moral and physical disease, with consequent disaster to the 
nation. There is no process more natural under the existing artifi- 
cial standards of living, and none more inevitable, than this degrada- 
tion in the stead of an ennoblement of the average boy. If, for 
example, he inquires regarding his anatomy, especially concerning 
those portions de Heated on high to the perpetuation of mankind, it is 
likely that he will not stop short of being informed. It will be a 
question merely of a good or bad teacher, a proper or polluted source 
of supply. It were well that all parents and teachers should under- 
stand that in every boy develops a desire to know. all that concerns 

33 



The Boy and His Need. 

himself, and that just as it is intelligently guided and directed does 
this instinct prove heaven or hell-born. His infant questions are put 
in all honesty and seriousness to those who hold his confidence. 
From them he expects honest and rational replies. He will demand, 
among other matters, to learn the manner in which, and whence, and 
why his brother or baby sister arrived upon the scene. False mod- 
esty, it should be remembered, has no part in him. He asks that 
which Nature tells him he has a right to know. He therefore 
demands an answer commensurate in intelligence with his power of 
mental digestion and assimilation. 

Of America's fifteen million boys exactly fifteen million 
will be very early put to the test to decide between honor and 
shame in their relation to their women. The parents who believe 
their prodigy safeguarded from temptation or immune to taint 
invite into his life moral wreck and physical ruin. 

His only protection, it would appear, lies in a full, sane 
knowledge of the facts regarding his normal sex makeup; 
and at a later stage depends upon a thorough demonstration of the 
dangers involved in its misuse. His parents refusing him this 
equipment he not only will, but he always has found a ready sub- 
stitute in the unclean talk of the street, stable, or school. What 
should be regarded as holy, or at least economically of value to 
home and state, through neglect forms the subject for ribaldry and 
jibe. An all important phase of his boy and adult life and one that 
might and should be regarded with respect and reverence may 
easily and usually does degenerate into a sideshow of seductive 
glamour and moral toxicity. The alley, the lounging room, and the 
bar are today the school rooms for the elucidation and the instilla- 
tion of social unhygiene. The boy refuses to remain ignorant, 
though the father and mother so decree, and even though the foun- 
tain head be polluted and the stream impure. He resolves the mat- 
ter in hand very simply and very promptly into a demand for facts, 
and facts or seeming facts he will have from whatever source they 
come. If the boy asks for definite data regarding the origin and 
expense (in terms of human suffering) of the species, his guardians 
will do well to allow no nursery tale or myth to improperly 
explain that which, if frankly dealt with, might in childhood win a 
loyal and devoted knight for womankind. If those who have his 
life in care refuse or neglect to furnish him with nourishing men- 
tal and moral food he will not have far to seek for less healthful 
sources of supply. If in due time he wonders regarding the science 
of reproduction, this field being suggested perhaps by an addition 
to the family of his favorite cat or cow, it will be a short-sighted 
father or mother that will allow such an opportunity for nature- 
teaching to slip by. If he queries as to the care of his person with 

34 



The Boy and His Need, 

a view to similar powers of reproduction in days to come there 
will be moral murder on the hands of the parent that seeks refuge 
from duty in the ignorance or in the raised palms of the prude. No 
subterfuge and no apology will be tolerated, because in form and 
matter they do not ring true. 

There has never appeared in creation a keener diagnostician 
of guile and double dealing than the boy. Hesitation and deceit even 
in father and mother will not escape his eye. Moreover the boy will 
very soon know all in a foul or clean way. Now, and only now 
the choice as to methods rests in the hands of those to whom he is 
most dear. If armed with healthy knowledge the likelihood is 
strong that even in an unclean environment he will remain pure. It 
will be expedient to take account of conditions as they exist today. 
From time immemorial have fathers and mothers shrunk from the 
task of informing and safeguarding the boy. And the result in 
terms of the boy? From time beyond reckoning he has wandered 
and been led into centers of iniquity and physical disease. As the 
consequence of, if not because of, ignorance the average is not a 
clean boy. Neither in mind, soul, nor body is his record fair. Prac- 
tical students of the boy problem have had forced upon them the 
cold fact that the large majority of boys and young men through 
neglect on the part of the proper teachers have been rendered mor- 
ally and physically dangerous to the community at large. In many 
instances this danger has crystallized into indescribable harm. It 
has become necessary to force upon fathers and mothers and upon 
the public at large the knowledge that not only has the average boy 
exposed himself at a very early age to open immorality with public 
women, but that the vast majority of these boys contract contagious 
disease. There is no secret among physicians of the fact that more 
than 50 per cent, of our I5,(XX),0C)0 boys have been or will be infected 
with some form of contagious social disease before they attain their 
majority. Those who deny the conservatism of these figures con- 
vict themselves of a lack of knowledge of and experience among boys 
and young men. The conditions result not only from an ignorance 
of evil, and not always because of lack of knowledge of the peril. 
Usually they are the consequence of a failure to appreciate the 
seriousness of personal responsibility to the home. Almost always 
they are the result of an ignorance of the fact that a present and a 
future home will certainly suffer. 

How many boys of today are taught openly and fearlessly that 
sex indulgence is not only not necessary to physical health but a 
moral and physical harm until the marriage relations have rendered 
it a natural and purposeful function? How many boys, and girls 
for that matter, have failed to hear and believe the vicious teaching 
of centuries that prostitution and illicit intercourse are necessary 

35 



The Boy and His Need. 

to the health of mankind? Born and bred in this conviction is it 
surprising that the boy of today has found it easy to commit sacri- 
lege against the home, and by so doing oftentimes to wreck both 
moral and physical health beyond repair? 

How many boys have been told by their fathers in time that 
few if any who indulge in illicit intercourse with women escape 
infection by social disease ? How many have been informed that the 
woman most dangerous to her partner in shame is that one of 
semi-respectability who in public still endeavors to preserve her 
good name? How^ many boys, and how many fathers and mothers, 
appreciate the state of affairs even in the large cities that leads the 
hospitals to close their doors to patients infected with the social 
diseases ? How many weigh the significance of the 20 to 25 per cent, 
of all the bHnd in our asylums, known to be due to one form of 
social disease; of the fact that 25,000 infant deaths are reported 
in one European country as a single year's quota of deaths from 
another form of social infection ; that 50 to 80 per cent, of all opera- 
tions upon the pelves of women are the result of the social diseases 
transmitted by the male ; and that 50 per cent, or more of all childless 
marriages are rendered so by disease of the innocent woman 
ignorantly and trustingly contracted from her husband ? How many 
boys learn until too late that sterility is in the great number of 
instances to be attributed to the male, and not to the wife whose 
life has been pure? How many know that when once infected it 
will be impossible to be certain of cure? All are tempted, and the 
schools and colleges furnish the breeding places and incubators of 
sex license. Curiosity, ridicule, example, are powerful factors 
in deciding the fate of the youth, balancing mayhap between an 
inherent sense of right and the masterful power of wrong. Five 
hundred thousand public women walk the streets of our cities, and 
a far larger and more dangerous army of clandestine prostitutes is 
housed by the factories, mills, offices, restaurants, and department 
stores. It is safe to say that all are permanently infected with one 
or another of the social diseases. In the small towns it is no infre- 
quent thing to find a marriage necessary to cover up a wrong to a 
young girl and her unborn child. One young teacher writes from 
a small community, "My whole being has just gone through a ter- 
rible shock of discovering that of a group of my high school boys, 
the finest group of boys in a New Jersey City — there is perhaps only 
one who has not already fallen morally. What is to be done for our 
boys?" 

Does the boy know the consequences imminent upon the girl if 
she bears him an illegitimate child? Does either the boy or the girl 
appreciate all that illegitimacy means to the foundling, that sorriest 
and most forlorn of all God's creatures? 

2^ 



The Boy and His Need. 

There is little reason to believe that the figures known through 
public records in France, and Germany, and England, would fail of 
duplication were statistics possible here. Were the moral injury 
the only harm there would exist incentive enough to warrant the 
attempt to safeguard the boy ! He stands not only for himself as a 
future man, and an individual unit of society! He represents the 
possible curse of an otherwise healthy and happy home, of an 
otherwise buoyant, vigorous mother, of an otherwise laughing, 
God-given child of joy, the first of a noble line reaching forward to 
meet in His own good time the Father of Creation. 



37 



Chapter IIL 

The Girl and Her Need. 

The Girl. 

We have already ventured the remark that there is only 'one 
other stock in trade so promising of development as the average boy. 
That other one is his sister — the girl — ^and the only point in which 
they differ at the beginning of the race is the girl's greater cer- 
tainty, under equal conditions and advantages, of development into 
full usefulness. She at once furnishes a better soil, more easily 
tilled, and by long inheritance and cultivation more thoroughly 
adapted to fertility and increase. She appears to be naturally less 
subject to disease, in spite of greater exposure; her life is often 
longer and more peaceful ; her death far more often is heralded by 
the silver of a gentle old age. As her mission is noble, so is she by 
nature better equipped and protected against moral harm. As in 
the case of most precious jewels, there is in her, however, an added 
liability to physical injury. As with all perishable treasures, 
in her case moral taint, once it takes hold, too often leads to irre- 
mediable physical decay. As her pinnacle is higher, so is her fall 
the greater when it comes. And the cause? Thousands of girls 
have been sacrificed upon the altar of a misguided ignorance, studied 
and deliberate on the part of the male sex, and imposed with a 
false sense of duty done by the short-sighted parent. Ignorance of 
her mission in life, ignorance of her powers to accomplish and con- 
trol, ignorance of her privileges as God meant her to enjoy them, 
ignorance above all of her right to the best that is good in life as 
men know that best, ignorance finally of her rightful title to equality 
with him in all things, including moral and physical health, this 
round of wicked, blind, helpless ignorance has led to the treading 
under foot of generation upon generation of our girls as though 
only the boy had been born free. This ignorance was and is termed 
innocence. And innocence, like the pretty, useless thing it is by 
itself, has been and still is considered a safeguard and a protection, 
instead of a limitation and a halter. No one has told womankind 
up to now that innocence lacks intelligence of being purity. No one 
has shown her that only when innocence has become intelligent 
through an education as thorough and deliberate as has been her 
ignorance will woman's emancipation take on reality and form. 

38 




The salvia (sage) being drained of its nectar by a bee, which is to carry 
away the pollen on its back, and in the hairs elsewhere over 
its body. Reproduction of a German wall chart. 



The Girl and Her Need. 

Why have the girl and the woman of this enlightened age been 
denied the privilege of an intelligent equality with the man and 
brother? John Stuart Mill sums the situation in a telling manner: 

"In every respect the burden is hard on those who attack an 
almost universal opinion. They must be very fortunate as well as 
unusually capable if they obtain a hearing at all." 

Thus we are living in a bygone age with respect to 
the girl, an age of open fields, of fresh country air, of 
immaculate innocence. We have failed to realize that with the 
progress of time girldom has advanced a bit in worldly wisdom 
but has not kept pace in her understanding of conditions and 
requirements. She has learned perforce much of Eve which you and 
I would like to spare her. Much that you and I consider horrid is 
in her life by force of her environment and oftentimes is to her a 
very commonplace thing. 

We must not forget that in the word "girl" we embrace 
more than one type that may or may not flower into woman- 
hood. W^e must include every mother's girl! We forget too 
easily that the favored and protected class forms the smallest 
and least important portion of society, and that the world of every- 
day women is exposed to many a wide blast that has become a 
gentle zephyr by the time it has reached her of the sheltered and 
cultured home. It will not be safe, however, to presume that even 
she is spared the force of its penetrating insinuations. The girl of 
the country side and she of the factory or department store are 
often one and the same at different stages of progress. Even the 
girl of wealth and idleness may in her father only a generation ago 
have known the pinch of privation, and have shuddered from and 
finally become callous to the life of the street. 

Whatever her nature, the given girl shares with every other 
at least one attribute that may be developed into her eternal safety 
or into an influence that shall accomplish her ruin. She has in her 
the promptings and instincts of sex, that will crown her with the 
halo of motherhood or doom her to the life of a castaway. So near 
together lie the hell and the home. 

The Girl's Needs. 

From her first intelligence she requires to be regarded and to 
regard herself as a future wife and mother. The beginnings of this 
realization should be sown in doll time. It is true that a smaller 
percentage of women marry at this day than ever before. It is also 
true that there are fewer happy married lives, and a vastly larger 
number of broken homes than a few years ago. This implies not 
only that children have been allowed to marry in full ignorance, 
but in the full absence of a desire and determination to thoroughly 

39 



The Girl and Her Need. 

understand one another. The sanctity of the home altar is as a 
consequence below par. 

Shall we find the explanation in the increased cost of living? 
Oh, no! One need not go so far! In the extravagant demands of 
the feminine sex upon the men? If so, I fail to hear the latter com- 
plain. Still less in a wish on her part to be housed in the luxury 
akin to that of her father's home ! Rather is the fault to be found 
in the constant general lowering of man's regard for woman's 
economic importance in his own affairs, and in his overlooking the 
fact that he is in eternal dependence upon her aid for his own 
existence upon the face of the earth. Men have been allowed to 
conceive the idea that they alone are of telling importance in the 
conduct of the world of affairs. Whereas the wonder of the uni- 
verse is not the birth of a male, but of a female child ! The won- 
drous miracle (oftentimes a tragedy) is the entrance upon the scene 
of the chief performer of the present and future, woman ! To her 
should be ascribed the salvos and the applause! Man has collabo- 
rated as playwright! But his part is very soon a thing of the past 
and his contribution is frequently so altogether insignificant or so 
unwholesome as to condemn the production when brought forth for 
the world's judgment ! In travail the woman has brought forth one 
by one the sons of earth, and should as a consequence be accorded 
a well-earned throne of dignity and honor! At one stage of his 
development the boy by instinct gives her this due. Two lovers 
only come into his life, his boyhood's chum and his sweetheart. The 
former of these may and should be his own mother. The latter 
should some day mother children for him. Even a young girl 
should learn to realize the force and power of mother influence 
and true womanliness over men. This is the essence of sex attrac- 
tion. However imperfectly appreciated, here lies the natural basis 
of passion and love. One fine, single woman may mother and 
inspire an army of men. No better instance could be cited of the 
magnetism of a pure, hightyped womanliness than that which shone 
out from a girl life* one evening in the recent past. She was but a 
lass and the star of a theatrical show. Men and boys do not look 
naturally to the stage of today for an inspiration to clean living and 
honor. Her audience was of college boys and at the conclusion of 
the play she had, for a moment at least, honorably won them for 
high standards and chivalry. Loud rang their college call, repeated 
again and again in their demand for a word before the curtain ! At 
last the girl actress came. With a nervous little laugh, and yet con- 
scious of her spell over them, she said, "Say, fellows, I can't make 
a speech — let's all sing." And with rare tact she led them in the 
song that told the world their love for their alma mater. Girl that 

*Miss Ethel Barrymore. 

40 



The Girl and Her Need. 

she was, she was also mother that night to a thousand boys, and as 
they filed out and homeward she was fairer for having been, and 
they for having known, a wholehearted woman. 

Dolltime finds the girl by nature in charge of a play home ! At 
that age the boy is not ashamed also to "pretend" in company with 
her. Later there comes a day in which he would court and build 
a nest with the mother of the former doll. It will depend altogether 
upon his loyalty, during the interval, to the mother in that tiny girl 
type and to his own chum-mother (God grant he may have known 
one), whether the developing woman shall find him worthy of 
trust and confident affection, and shall restore him to his old place 
at her side. 

The girl also needs to know that no young boy was meant to 
be more characteristically vigorous and robust than she, and that 
for a time both boys and girls should be almost, if not quite, 
physical equals. Up to a certain age many a girl can outrun, out- 
swim, outvie, outlast a boy. Should he alone be allowed to enjoy 
a similar growth in these departments of well being from that 
moment in which life begins to be round and full? Why should the 
girl now be left behind? Has any decree of nature doomed her 
to physical second place? In the matter of athletics "yes," in that 
of health "no" ! As time passes and woman's daily, weekly and 
monthly rounds of sacrifice become more obligatory, the equality 
of the sexes undergoes a severe test, though it should never be 
strained to the point of lowering woman's health standard or of a 
relinquishment of her right to perfect moral and physical integrity. 
She needs to learn that God's out-of-doors is a reality meant for 
"her" as well as for "him," and in the same full measure; that 
muscular, well-rounded limbs, a clear eye and a happy heart are 
hers not by right of man, but because the Creator gave her these 
things as an inheritance the day she was born! Selfish man has 
shut her out, or rather in, from them ! She, herself, by concessions 
to inane fashions and vog^ies has in a measure acquiesced in his 
dictation, and relinquished her title to freedom of motion and 
volition. She has allowed the sterner sex to set her a vicious 
example in the repressing of her own bouyance and vitality. These 
prerogatives may again be hers for the seizure, if not for the 
asking. Her mother and she must be far-sighted enough to discern 
the need of early training of mind, and heart, and especially of 
her body, if it be her aim and wish to compete on a plane of 
physical and mental equality with her brother. It cannot be antici- 
pated that she can develop indoors, and he out, she as an artificial 
flower, and he as one of nature's blossoms, and yet at the same 
pace and with the likelihood of the same perfection and vigor. The 
old legend applies equally to her and to him: "Be not deceived, 

41 



The Girl and Her Need. 

God is not mocked, that which a man soweth, that shall he also 
reap." If her mother and she lay in childhood the foundation for 
her health and its twin sisters, happiness and contentment, she will 
enjoy them in old age, provided she continue the planting and 
tilling and fertilizing assiduously to the tog^ of the grave. As little 
a thing as the scrupulous care of her childhood's teeth may signify 
to her in adult life the enjoyment or total lack of a beauty of 
form and disposition that may be hers for the planning. 

Many treasures seem to alight in the nature of windfalls ! Not 
one of these but can be traced to some seed, planted, perhaps all 
unconsciously, when the field most cordially invited the sowing! 
Many a disability or physical lack would on the surface appear to 
disqualify a daughter of Eve from active competition in life's 
struggle, when a little foresight and persistence on the part of the 
mother, and a ready compliance by the growing girl might have 
furnished her with a beauty and an address that would have ren- 
dered conquest easy and opened a path around and beyond the 
necessity and into the forfeited goal of motherhood and a home! 

The girl needs for her own healthy development as well as 
for the sake of a healthy influence upon others a simple and 
elementary, though scientifically accurate, understanding of the 
anatomy and physiology of her body. Especially will this knowledge 
be helpful in so far as it explains to her the mysteries of sex instinct 
and sex phenomena and answers the natural questionings of child- 
hood with regard to the species from the human down to the duck, 
the relation of male to female in matters as widely diversified 
as common courtesy, sex reproduction, and hereditary talent and 
incompetence. Only today, a sexless child of 31 years, in most 
fields of knowledge better qualified than the average woman, plain- 
tively requested from me permission to witness the study of the 
sex organs of her sister, then under examination for an infection 
sim'ilar to one that had cost herself the operative removal of her 
sex organs when a married girl of seventeen. "If I had known I 
was formed like that," was her significant comment, "you never 
could have persuaded me to marry a man until I knew he was 
clean." Probably not one woman in a hundred realizes the need 
of sex hygiene nor the difficulty of its establishment and maintenance 
in her particular case and in the man she is to marry! The full 
appreciation of the need and its fulfillment may, however, set the 
balance of the scale toward the happiness and integrity of a home, 
while neglect may prove its undoing. It would appear wise in 
due time to instruct both the boy and the girl (certainly the girl) 
in the main anatomical and physiological features of both sexes. 
What boy, ignorant of these things and full of natural and prurient 
curiosity, can be expected to intelligently safeguard the physical 

42 



The Girl and Her Need. 

welfare of his girl playmate or sister ? Where is the unsophisticated 
girl that will be likely to avoid disgust at the thought of sex union 
as an inordinate sex appetite, instead of a talent the use of which is 
requisite to reproduction of the species, unless there be uppermost 
in her life a realization of the sacredness and the dignity of the 
God-given privilege of perpetuating the Father's likeness, and unless 
there be accurate knowledge, intelligently imparted at the proper 
time, with regard to the anatomical features of the body, and the 
wonder and mechanical wisdom of their construction for the end 



m view 



It is the exception to meet with an unmarried woman who 
knows the physical reasons for keeping the organs of reproduction 
scrupulously clean, or who appreciates their importance and signifi- 
cance as bearing upon her life and happiness. It is the common 
statement of married women consulting with their physicians that 
before marriage they knew practically nothing regarding the need 
of instruction with respect to their own or their life partner's 
physical body. No one prepared them for unnecessary blunders 
and dangers before they entered into that richest in happiness and 
peril of all life's ways. On the score of indelicacy and difficulty 
of approach, and because of a modesty as false, transparent, and 
fatal as the affection of Judas for the Christ, thousands of young 
wives have been brought already sexless from disease to the operat- 
ing table, thousands more have there been rendered sterile, and 
then scolded in public and private for the hidden sins of the male! 
Once spread readably upon paper for the inspection of the human 
race the record of the feminine holocaust the world over, resulting 
directly from the ignorance of the woman regarding her physical 
makeup and her duty thereto, and from the animal license of the 
male, both guilty and ignorant, and there must in simple justice go 
up to heaven alongside the wail from wronged womankind a 
battle-cry of desperate determination from the handful of loyal 
men! If the girl of the twentieth century has a single need it is 
for a simple, sane understanding of her physical self, of her greatest 
physical object in living, and the means of its fulfillment. 

Outside the doctor's confidence there is probably no lay 
appreciation of woman's hunger and thirst after accurate informa- 
tion regarding the wonderful changes that astound her first at 
puberty and again at the threshold of old age. If flowers think, and 
communicate their intelligence to one another in however a primitive 
a fashion, as certain scientists are convinced they do, probably 
their chief point of common interest and confidence centers in the 
sex phenomena. The young girl is usually allowed to grope alone 
in the darkness of wonderment and curiosity, oftentimes in real 
fear and dread, when a word from a real mother or franker 
physician might dispel the cloud and convince the fearful one 

43 



The Girl and Her Need. 

that God works in a mysterious way, but that He also pays unceas- 
ing attention to the nobility and conservation of His life as it is 
transmitted through woman; that He has not only not deserted, 
but is winning His world through her; and, that she is at these 
periods undergoing the preliminary trial that shall send her forth 
"like gold" ! 

Should a girl of twelve or thirteen or fourteen years be allowed 
to experience the constitutional revolution that takes place at that 
time, without the privilege of a preliminary advance explanation 
of every occurrence that may needlessly disconcert or bewilder 
her? Is there no guardian angel to supply the loss or absence of 
the mother who will gather our girls into her bosom and shield 
and forefend them by means of sane information imparted in 
time ? Shall a girl learn only when driven to confiding in a stranger, 
oftentimes a physician, and a man at that, those things that should 
be vouchsafed to her only by her mother or older sister? Why 
take for granted that a child will know that which no child has 
ever of itself understood? Did you understand untaught? As 
with the boy, there will also arise the question of suitable teachers. 
If the opportunity be afforded there will be no lack of vicious 
information ready at hand for the girl, and in lieu of the guardian 
angel will come ready to hand the unhealthy jests and jibes of 
girl companion and even of male acquaintances, the misinformation 
of the newspaper advertisement, housewive's gossip, and worse 
than all, the pernicious cackling of the prude. ''Tell my girl why 
she is ill once a month, and explain why her bust swells, and her 
neck grows large at such times ! Not I ! I don't propose to have 
her set her mind on such things and bother her head about matters 
she had better not know !" Very well, short-sighted mother, aunt, 
or elder sister ! Look back into your own girlhood ! Remember 
your own wistful face as you peered into your specked little looking 
glass and longed for someone to tell you that all was well, and that 
God was only fitting you to be a woman! Either your girl will 
be blessed with a healthy mind or body, or the opposite, and "the 
which" may depend upon your own sanity in handling her! 

A girl life makes or breaks for virtue or dishonor between the 
ages of thirteen and eighteen years. There is no deeper thinking, 
more truly religious, chrysalis girltime than this. Under all her 
superficiality, flippancy, dress, and powder, and curl, this trifler 
cares,^ and her deeplaid interest invites sober teaching by that one 
who is keen enough to look beneath and understand! He who 
regards her as a mere flirt knows not the young girl! They who 
think differently are the dupes of her chameleon manycoloredness. 
They form the great body of that improvident host that has 
sacrificed its childwomen rather than instruct its little mothers of 
future men. 

44 



D ode f- Fori Atlas 




Centaurea Cyanus. L. ' ' ' .^ 



The cornflower, in section, showing the stamens, pistils, and the 
ovary with its contents. Note the insect visitors. Repro- 
duction of a German wall chart. 



The Girl and Her Need, 

The girl must be shown through many an object lesson the 
physical relation of fresh air, exercise, cleanliness, sensible food, 
dress, and ample rest, to her present opportunity to enjoy life, and to 
her future abiHty to be a healthy mother and to bear healthy chil- 
dren. That which will signify little to the thoughtless girl if taught 
in the abstract, will take on a vigorous interest when applied to her 
future privilege of motherhood, a privilege only providing her 
girlhood warrants her being trusted, later on, with fuller respon- 
sibilities and wider development. I have just seen a little girl 
of five deny herself the companionship of her dearest, homeliest 
doll, in order that this apostle of frank unattractiveness might visit 
the hospital and have her hair and cheeks repainted into color and 
bloom, which to the child mother meant evident health and restora- 
tion to vigor and usefulness, if not beauty. "She is my bestest 
daughter!" explained the natural-born mother over the colorless 
cheeks and the frayed scalp of the anemic, porcelain baby. 

To many a girl outdoor exercise is a delight ! To many another 
it is a great cross! But when this is true, look carefully and well 
for a physical cause. The body that is up to or above physical par 
glories in the use and play of its muscles and abilities. 

Only the degenerate mind and body dread the discharge of 
duty and the friction of activity. Care of the mouth, stomach, and 
indeed of the entire digestive tract, is always regarded in childhood 
as an unmitigated affliction. In the case of most girls, however, the 
incompatibility so patent between a disordered digestive tract and 
vanity and personal pride, between a slovenly hygiene and a 
dainty, trim look, furnishes the providential force that tides them 
over the careless age into a new regard for appearances, and thus 
preserves to them their power to please. The girl whose skin is 
mottled, and marked, she whose complexion is unhealthy, sallow, 
whose wild rose color has yielded to a sickly, yellow-brown, that 
girl whose attitude and carriage are listless and labored from too 
miuch food and too little of outdoors, this girl has surely lacked up 
to now an intelligent mother chum, nor can she be on terms of fair 
dealing with the doctor or he in frank relations with her in the 
matter of her health plan. 

Does the girl care for her personal appearance? Have you 
read the magazine article on "Walrus Liz", the prototype of the 
homeliest w^oman whom the Creator ever saw fit to fashion? Such 
women exist, and we now and again see this type in possession of a 
new petticoat and skirt, and an old shawl that might easily have 
come down from an antediluvian revelry, a little poverty-stricken 
bonnet on the back and tilting over to the side of her head ! Have 
you watched her slip in quietly at the end of the day and toward 
twilight, and plume herself for the evening battle in attractiveness 

45 



The Girl and Her Need. 

and attraction? Her sailor lover comes in tonight from a long 
cruise, and she must allure, not repel him ! Does she aim at winning 
a husband, or rather does she acknowledge such an objective? 
Certainly, not! Far indeed be it from any twentieth century maid 
to look on marriage as the inevitable thing. But let her fail through 
neglect of hygiene of heart, soul, or body, of an alluring force 
seductive enough to gain her life mate, and she at once is ready 
to espouse with the determination of unacknowledged despair the 
waywardness and wilfulness of any and every unfortunate that 
crosses her path. Many a clean, trim girl enjoys popularity and 
triumph solely by virtue of her neat appearance! Her very clean- 
liness of body and mind compels the attention of the male! No 
less certain is the masculine comment upon a tawdry, careless girl ! 
There is reason to believe that many more matings and marriages 
are made on earth than in heaven, and that this factor of a hygienic 
air and impression goes farther toward the conquest than any 
other conscious or unconscious influence. 

At the proper age the twentieth century girl must needs learn 
once and for all that just as her right to equally perfect physical 
health with the boy and man is to be considered and insisted upon 
as a matter of course, so the standard of moral health and cleanli- 
ness must be the same, and must be observed by the two sexes alike. 
No longer is the demand to be based upon purely moral grounds! 
Physicians are sounding an alarm all along the line to the eflfect 
that only the chaste male and female can be and are physically 
healthy and clean parents. No longer is a double standard of moral 
and physical health to be tolerated by the woman in her capacity 
as a citizen! No longer are her eyes to remain closed to the fact 
that such an adjustment of morality as has permitted immoral 
freedom to only one sex, and thereby consigned the other to sterility 
and invalidism while it was ignorant of the cause, — that such a 
division of privileges and responsibilities hardly redounds to the 
credit of her intelligence, nor to the furthering of her or her 
children's best good ! Like the horse, woman has up to now never 
realized her power to control, nor her part in the blame ! She has 
indeed been aware that moral affairs were not as they should be, 
yet has submitted to a constantly increasing moral subjection to 
and unspeakable indignities from the male sex. She has not here- 
tofore known that, together with the immoral license which she has 
allowed him, she has invited her own physical infection and that 
of her child, oftentimes her own unsexing and disabling, in direct 
consequence, upon the operating table, very frequently the perma- 
nent blinding, oftentimes the sacrifice of her children, not 
infrequently their crippling and early death ! Whole institutions of 
the paralyzed and insane from latent disease appear in the midst 



The Girl and Her Meed. 

of our child and adult life! Surely there is incentive and need 
sufficient to inspire the present day girl to a wise choice of and a 
wise regulation of her male friends and of her partner for life ! 

There is also an urgent need for the girl and woman to realize 
their influence upon boys and men, and its inevitable reaction and 
result upon the moral and physical health of the community. It is 
not too extreme to assert that it lies within woman's power to win 
back health for herself and her children by her single-handed 
establishment and enforcement of a right standard of living by the 
male. Certainly with her eyes open to evidence that neither can 
be mistaken nor should be ignored, no woman can in future claim 
that she is free from participation in the crime if she marries an 
infected man ! If she continues to tolerate the consignment of a 
portion of her city to open prostitution, womankind will deserve 
her disgrace ! Her men have not acted for her, but she both can 
and will act for herself ! If the streets swarm at night w4th infected 
girls and women who lie in wait for careless and criminal 
husbands and brothers of unheeding wives and sisters, it is because 
our women are willing for it to continue, not because the prostitutes 
cannot be placed and kept where they cannot be found! It will 
soon be as common knowledge that the confirmed drinker and 
gambler are also confirmed in immorality and physical infection, 
as that any other nurse and nursery hatch out their natural brood ! 
The girl who marries a man of loose habits, even though they be 
of the past, and even though he appear altogether clean, does so 
with the physician's label upon him as a dangerous associate, liable 
to carry into wedlock sorrow and disaster, and out of it a broken 
home. There is necessary a stern scrutiny of the men offering 
themselves as husbands, and a far sterner self-command will be 
imperative upon the women of this and every land if the men are to 
be held at arm's length who are not certainly clean and pure. It 
will not require long, however, to open a divide between those 
who live and those who do not live in the light of day. Neither 
men nor women will tolerate deceitfulness in such a vital matter! 
It will also be found difficult, when under deliberate observation, for 
men to live double lives. Vestrymen, elders, and deacons will soon 
find it uncomfortable and perhaps impossible to engage in real 
estate transactions that involve the handling of gain from the 
immoral use of their property ! The soiling of their reputations will 
no doubt prove more effective than the tainting of their money, 
because woman now becomes both judge and jury in the case, with 
a display of a new type of justice and dispatch in its execution that 
will prove more salutary than a prison term ! Mayors and council- 
men and aldermen can be elected and defeated upon the basis of 
an assurance that the moral and therefore the physical life of the 

47 



The Girl and Her Need. 

city shall or shall not be, as far as possible, clean ! The accomplish- 
ment of this political Utopia will have been realized when women 
shall have first felt and laid hold upon their latent power of control I 
It constitutes neither a fancy nor an idle dream ! It calls for a 
leader, and for quiet, deliberate action maintained in the face of 
forces that see in woman's victory and salvation nothing to gain 
and everything to lose ! 

Finally: What do women and girls need to know about the 
underworld of prostitution and feminine debasement? Only so 
much, my friends, as will safeguard them, and as far as they have 
an influence, enable them to safeguard the men and boys ! The 
girl need know little or nothing of these things during child life 
and years ! Normal sex hygiene will cover every requirement ! 
Later, however, she must learn all, if she hears anything, and if 
she is to have an intelligent understanding of the case without 
suffering a mental and moral bias as the result of her disgust and 
horror at the existing state of man's home and foreign relations. 
Enough, however, of this discussion until a later chapter, in which 
we shall consider at greater length the facts which the girl and 
boy must know in order to teach their future children ! 

There is a further need on the part of the growing girl-woman 
that is as vital as it is studiously neglected. Her citizen-relation 
to the prostitute is of no small moment both to her and to the fallen 
girl. It will be well for her to remember that every degraded 
woman was once as clean as she, and that her home, whether rich 
or lowly, should have sheltered her from harm! Every abandoned 
girl can be reclaimed, if reached with a determinedly affectionate 
hand before the setting of the swift tides of despondency and 
degeneracy. Nearly ever)^ dissolute woman has been abandoned by 
those who could help her, before she has herself altogether given 
up hope of eventual recall from her low state. Therefore the 
term "abandoned" is a reproach upon society, and especially upon 
the world of women who have forced and still are forcing these 
unfortunates to remain where our boys and men first compelled 
them to lie. It is to be remembered further that every such girl 
is still a woman, however marred the image, and that a certain 
few — more than are known — are actually and permanently reclaimed 
for virtue and nobility. Each is a possible, perhaps already an 
actual mother. It may be considered as proven beyond cavil that 
each and every individual girl, not a degenerate, can be lifted out of 
the mire by an individual woman who will make of her redeeming 
a life work, and spend upon her a whole-hearted devotion! This 
will require untold sacrifice on the part of countless women ! It will 
involve intimate contact with a side of life that many, if not most 
of us, are only too ready to shun ! But in saving one there will be 

48 



The Girl and Her Need. 

saved many another woman, through the physical prevention and 
preservation of numberless boys and men in cleanliness and health 
against their marrying time, whom that one would otherwise have 
cursed with transmissible disease before she sent them again home! 



49 



Chapter IV. 

A Brief Talk on Heredity of Health and Disease, 
and the Selfishness of Unhygiene. 

First, with regard to unhygiene. 

I am venturing to coin the word "unhygiene" in an attempt 
to characterize one of our curable national sins. Hygiene hardly 
needs to be defined as the science of health. If speaking medically 
one might say that hygiene is the science of health through preven- 
tion, and especially through moral and physical foresight and 
integrity. The more conscientious the hygiene, if its practice be 
intelligent, the more perfect the result in terms of mental, moral, 
and physical happiness and welfare. Neither physical nor moral 
integrity is possible except there be in goodly measure hygiene of 
all three, body, soul, and mind. 

I will therefore use the word unhygiene to portray the all too 
familiar slovenliness with which you and I eat, drink, sleep, work, 
play, walk, talk, and even think and pray. Unhygiene includes 
grimy hands, a disordered digestion, and a soiled mind. It is 
pictured in an untidy coiffure, a stuffy bedroom, in the ill-smelling 
raiment of the tobacco slave, in language that is careless or profane, 
and in every evidence of a morbid, inconsiderate, or self-centered 
heart and mind. 

Never a necessity, unhygiene is ubiquitous. Always enter- 
tained at the expense of one's fellows, it has but one redeeming 
feature in that the punishment meted out to him who risks 
indulgence never disappoints the expectation. Unhygiene subsists 
upon the immediate unhappiness of one's neighbors, and upon the 
ultimate undoing of Number One. It exacts full toll from both 
one's neighbor and oneself. Selfishness is its cardinal creed. By 
way of business calculation let us take account of stock and 
catalogue a few items of the selfishness of unhygiene. 

Physical Unhygiene. 

If you are a working man or woman, adult or embryo, you may 
have already run over with your mind's eye last night's late hour 
for retiring, your unkempt and half-ventilated sleeping room, your 
consequently broken rest, your hurried and superficial morning bath, 
your breakfast of stimulants and fried unnecessaries, perhaps a 
hurried ride to work in a hermetically closed car, your indoor day 

5P 



Heredity. 

broken only by another indigestible meal, your ride home in a 
second stuffy car because you believe yourself too tired to walk, 
and a final meal improperly eaten and undigested because of an 
uncared for, tired body. When I speak to **you" I address thousands 
of American boys and girls, men and women. You have also, 
perhaps, recalled the evening spent in the parlor as your pfeparation 
for a restless night and a dyspeptic, nervous tomorrow. And the 
actual tomorrow^ ? Unless Providence has safeguarded you there are 
to be seen the sallow, often the blotchy skin, the dark- ringed eyes, 
the wrinkled ''headache" brow, the tired back and limbs, the wry 
tongue and temper, the distaste for food, the reluctance to work, — 
one or all of these earmarks of indoor unhygiene, and of hunger 
for commonsense methods of living and God's fresh air. 

And your neighbor? First of all you must admit, young man 
or woman, you have not considered your neighbor as having any 
right or claim upon you in the arrangement of your day ! Secondly, 
if you have thought of that neighbor at all, you have seen him or 
her perhaps shrink away involuntaril) at the sight and sound of 
you! You wonder why only because you cannot see and hear 
yourself as you look, and talk, and think. Your carriage and 
appearance, your voice and air, your buoyant friendliness or 
dyspeptic disdain, are calculated to give the old world her lift up 
or her shove down exactly to the point at which your influence 
ceases to be felt and known. She is a mirror reflecting you as you 
are, not as you think yourself to be. If you are boy or man, you are 
or should be cursed neither by the tight collar or corset nor by the 
ill-fitting or high-heeled shoe. If a man, your chest and arms are 
likely to be warmly covered in winter, and your ankles protected 
against the slush and rain. (Not so surely is this true if you are a 
boy!) Thus, to the extent of your elders' example you have the 
advantage over your fashion-ridden sister. It may be that your 
first deep, morning breath carries in the impurities and poisons of 
the cigarette or the cigar. Just so certainly will yoUr last breath 
of the evening fail to empty the tissues of the day's accumulated 
store. You continue absorbing during your short sleep the nicotine 
and other poisonous principles you have smoked in the long day. 
If you have a wife and she is unfortunate enough to have mated 
with you she also absorbs and breeds into her child the tobacco that 
you force upon her, whether or no ! She "may not mind" the smell, 
but neither she nor the tiny babe can avoid the absorption and 
inheritance of the effects of the drug. Nor can you shirk the 
responsibility. 

It may also be that you indulge in the practices of bodily untidi- 
ness, improper eating, and lack of exercise, that have made 
many a woman'?* life a burden because of a man. Fortunately for 



Heredity. 

men their love for athletics has led them without thought for the 
wisdom of the thing into the open country and made it necessary 
to drink deeply of clear water and clean air. Unfortunately these 
same athletics have frequently led a man after the game to the 
saloon, and into allied excesses that have too often undone all the 
good and substituted inevitable physical and moral harm. 

"The selfishness of all this physical unhygiene in the woman 
and the man (providing you admit it to be such) consists in what?" 
do you ask? In answer, and by way of illustration, let me deal first 
with the corset and the tight shoes. Both men and women will 
listen while we discuss the woman! Both the corset and the 
improper shoe render a perfect or even a free circulation of blood 
through the lower chest and upper abdomen for the one part and 
through the feet for the other, a practical impossibility. As a direct 
result there arises a sluggishness of circulation throughout the entire 
body with consequent headache, tired muscles, constipation, perhaps 
varicose veins (and, as one form of the latter, hemorrhoids), and 
a disordered digestion. The effect of a part or all of this picture 
upon the temper, the disposition, the character, not only becomes 
apparent in the primary victim, but is reflected upon the world at 
large. 

In the case of the boy or man let me now dwell again upon 
that unwelcome parallel of the corset and pinching shoe, the tobacco 
habit. No man ever admitted aloud that he was the victim of the 
tobacco habit. His friends, none the less, may have to conclude 
from certain features of the ailment that he is not a competent 
judge. No man smokes or chews tobacco without paying the price 
of the indulgence. He may live to a ripe old age, and a number do. 

Many, however, are the men that frequent the doctor's office 
and need never be there were tobacco, and its best friend and ally, 
alcohol, looked upon by the laity as most physicians now regard 
them, as tissue poisons under all circumstances. The selfishness of 
the tobacco habit is all that should be required in the way of an 
argument in this land of supposed gentlemen. Let no smoker 
disabuse himself of the idea that he is offensive in some degree to 
a variable but ever-increasing percentage of the people with whom 
he is thrown in contact throughout the day. Let him not think 
that he smokes alone. Those who desire clean air cannot enjoy it 
today even on the highway because of him. To the fact that 
tobacco laden air is not harmless, the dead laboratory animal, or 
dog or kitten will silently testify after breathing the smoke from 
pipe or cigar for an experimental few hours. A few nights ago one 
of the young men in whom I have been interested, — a boy of 
eighteen, with trembling hands, irresolute will, anemic face, palpita- 
tion, and a catarrhal discharge from the nose and throat, all 

52 







1. The dandelion, showing a single floret. 

2. A carnation, scarlet sage, and hepatica. 

3. A potato hill, with tubers growing. 

4. Orchids undergoing fertilization by bees. (Bailey, Kerner.) 



Heredity. 

appearing with the use of tobacco and disappearing with its with- 
drawal, — this young man stated before a company of forty others 
that he ''could not and would not give up" his tobacco during their 
week of summer camp. Rather than do so he must and would 
forego the week of their companionship in the fresh air. How many 
of the forty, do you suppose, were willing to deny themselves the 
use of the drug under the influence of that sermon? His devotion 
and subjection to tobacco moulded the sentiment of more than one. 
Late that night he realized his influence, and the selfishness and 
perhaps even the wickedness of risking harm to others such as 
the habit had brought upon him. His pipe and can of tobacco came 
into my possession with the promise that until he felt free to 
deliberately injure his next door neighbor, they would not be used 
again. 

These are simple, single illustrations from the everyday life of 
the woman and the man. An unclean skin, a tousled head, a foul 
breath, soiled linen, ill-kept nails, are not only influences that make 
for the oftentimes unconscious discomfort and ill-health of their 
owner, but act as depressing and infecting factors upon humanity. 
To that degree at least is unhygiene selfish, and to that extent 
should it be placed under the ban. Every woman and every man 
owes to the crowding world her and his fairest physical appear- 
ance and condition, according to the circumstances in which she or 
he lives. Scrupulous cleanliness, a modest lack of display, a radiant 
health set in its only becoming attire of a simplicity of color and' 
style that Nature herself would approve, — these things will make 
for happiness and brightness in a world that is meant to be joyous 
and free, except in so far as men and women bring sorrow and 
misfortune and ill-health upon themselves and their kind by one or 
another form of unhygiene. 

I wish there were time and space to talk more fully of mental 
and moral hygiene. These are so closely bound up and interwoven 
with the hygiene of the physical body that they seem like the eye 
and ear of the full economy of health. 

Perhaps it is as well that the physician should limit himself 
to his own particular province, and speak authoritatively of that 
of which he can say "I know." 

Heredity of Health and Disease. 

Heredity has been defined as **the transference to the offspring 
of the qualities of the parent or parents." This definition is unsatis- 
factory in that it fails to include such conditions as diseased states, 
some of which can be and are actually inherited, and also in that 
it suggests that all qualities transferred to the offspring from the 
parent are inherited. The definition will, however, serve a purpose 

■ 53 



Heredity. 

in the way of reminding us that the conditions surrounding the 
child from the moment of its birth are almost as important in 
developing its future as are the inherited qualities that are actually 
handed down from father and mother to son and daughter. We 
must not confuse the hereditary possessions of a child with those 
which have been developed out of postnatal influences beginning 
with its first cry in the free air. 

Perhaps the whole matter of heredity will become clear when 
I recall to the student's mind the fact that in most plants, and in 
nearly all forms of animal Hfe, there is required for the forming 
of a new life the union of two germ cells, the spermcell, which 
originates in the father or male individual, and the ovum or egg- 
cell, which comes from the female. The transmission of any 
parental influence through one or other of these cells is heredity. 




Union of the maternal and paternal chromosomes, resulting in equal 

contributions of the male and female to the nuclei of the 

daughter cells. (Reproduced from Thomson.) 

The single cell forms (unicellular) may be asexual in their develop- 
ment, and give off neither spermcell nor eggcell. They may repro- 
duce by budding or by division, and by separation of the new 
element from the parent. In the starfish one point may separate 
and bear several new fish, altogether or in all main features like 
the original five-pointed star. Many boys and girls have noted tTie 
fact that an earthworm when cut in two will sometimes develop into 
two living worms. They have their tradition that in order for this 
to occur the halves must live until sundown; thereupon activity is 
born in each. In most asexual forms the separated new part is 
identical with or very like the parent. It is simply a grown-up 
baby cell pushed off from the other cell, and develops into an iden- 
tical likeness. J. Arthur Thomson gives a number of illustrations 
of the problems of heredity that form the opposite end of the 



Heredity. 

science from this simple beginning of the single cell. He mentions 
the shepherd dog, which may have an eye resembling that of its 
father and the other resembling closely the mother's eye. The 
piebald foal may show its mother's hair in one area, and the father's 
type of hair in others. The race horse Eclipse sired many foals, a 
number of which were as swift as he. He also displayed a curious 
spot of color which reappeared in these foals to the sixth genera- 
tion. Every one knows of at least one instance of family feature 
that has persisted without break or intermission for generations. 
A striking example is the prognathous under jaw of the royal house 
of Spain which ran for centuries through the heirs to the throne. 
Thomson speaks also of the striking outcome of the mating of 
black and of splashed-white Andalusian fowls, in which the mating 
of splashed whites gives only splashed white fowls, and the mating 
of blacks yields only blacks, while in the mating of a black with a 
splashed white the outcome is an all-blue fowl. Many instances 
suggest that the mother of an animal when crossed by other than 
its father, may later on bear to the latter an offspring showing the 
features and traits of the mother's former mate. This point is 
not only of interest, but intensely important, if it also holds, as has 
more than once been claimed, in the case of a human widow bearing 
to a second husband a boy or girl resembling closely, not only in 
looks but in character, the former spouse. I have known a number 
of instances in which a little lock of white hair, over one brow, 
formed a distinguishing feature of the family relationship. That 
none of the foregoing peculiarities is likely to be the result of sur- 
rounding conditions, I think we will all agree. Each is a distinct 
inheritance entirely different from such a development of color, and 
shape, and use of parts of the body and of limbs even, as is seen 
in certain land toads of which the male develops a new finger 
on his hand with which to hold the female when they begin to 
live as water toads. The necessity born of convenience or the com- 
pulsion of environment often institutes a change in form or growth. 
The color of the skin of the negro was in all probability originally 
not an inheritance. Today in a climate and latitude that do not 
tend to develop a dark skin the dark pigment appears to be a real 
inheritance. 

I have gone rather fully into these points because their 
importance reasserts itself at once when we begin to study traits, 
and features of mind as well as of the body, and when we investi- 
gate the inheritance of disease. The ovum, or germcell from the 
female parent, is usually many times larger than the spermcell from 
the male, sometimes a million times as gross. Usually it is several 
hundred times larger. It contains the living cell substance 
(cytoplasm), which forms the greater portion of the cell, also other 

55 



Heredity. 

substances that are not alive, including pigment, oil globules, and 
yolk. In the cytoplasm is a nucleus, consisting of a tiny central 
body surrounded by a fine little membrane. This nucleus contains 
a netVv'Ork of microscopic threads or filaments that can be stained 
and studied under the lens. Under high magnification the threads 
are seen as strings of tiny cells. The little cells are called 
microsomes. When the filaments become active in reproductive 
changes they form a definite number of little chromatin bodies, 
which are called chromosomes. These are always present in the 
same number in all the cells of an individual of a given species. 
Inside the nucleus is often one, and sometimes more little nucleoli, 
which have slight significance, and need not concern us here. The 
spermcell which grows from the spermatozoon when the latter has 
entered the ^gg is the important part of the male element. It also 
contains chromatin filaments, the same in number in each one of 
the spermatozoa of that species. Thus the ov4im and the, sperma- 
tozoon contain each the same number of chromatin filaments. 

Van Beneden has showed that in nearly all plants and animals 
the nucleus of the ovum and that of the spermatozoon each contains 
one-half as many chromosomes (stained filament bodies) as the 
cell from which they grow. When they join, the new body cells 
receive the new chromosomes and again the cycle starts within the 
body cells containing double the number of those found in the ovum 
and spermatozoon. The number of chromosomes in the cells is 
constant and marks the species of plant or animal. In both the lily 
and the mouse, for instance, the number is twenty-four; in the ox, 
and in the onion, and in man the number is sixteen; in the grass- 
hopper it is twelve, and in the shark thirty-six. 

The method by which the chromosomes in the nuclei of the 
body cells reduce their number until in the ovum and spermatozoon 
they are only one-half the original, is well shown in the following 
figure drawn by Thomson after Hertwig and Weisman. 

It is easy to see that the important portion of the cell is the 
nucleus, whether it be the ovum or the spermatozoon under con- 
sideration. Of the many spermatozoa that try to penetrate the 
ovum the successful one leaves its tail or flagellum outside. The 
outside membrane of the ovum then becomes thick and is usually 
impenetrable to other spermatozoa. The sperm nucleus and the 
tgg nucleus attract and move toward one another. Just at the base 
of the nucleus of the spermatozoon is a tiny body called its centro- 
som.e. This enters with the head and splits in two. The function 
of this little centrosome seems to be to keep on drawing the two 
nuclei together for their union to form the developing ovum and 
finally the perfect progeny. The chromosomes of the nuclei of the 
spermatozoon and the ovum apparently are the portions that carry 

56 



O cfl 



n 



■ < 
31? -^ 






rS. 



(T) 




Heredity. 

the hereditary influences from parent to child. These filaments in 
the ovum are woven in and out with those of the spermatozoon in 
some wonderful fashion (the little centrosome has been called "the 
weaver") to form the embryo, which in this way partakes of the 
father's and mother's natures in equal measure. The next diagram 
shows roughly the method of division of the chromosomes, and the 
development of the cell bodies. 






1 ^ --™< ^ '-'^^ I ^) ^. 






S 
^J^-^' ■-•>' 




r'^5 fr^-: SImI (JC'- 



"A\ Primitive spermceil Vv'ith four chromosomes (Ascaris 
meg-alocephala). 

B'. Sperm mother cell with eight chromosomes. 

C. Two spermatocytes, each with four chromosomes. 

D'. Four spermatozoa, each with two chromosomes. 

A. Primitive Qgg cell with four chromosomes. 

B. Fully developed ovum with eight chromosomes. 

C. Formation of first polar body pb i (this divides into two, 
each with two chromosomes). 

D. Formation of second polar body, pb 2. 

Both the nuclei of the ripe spermatozoon and of the ovum have 
two chromosomes." 

In the child may appear either the likeness of one parent or of 
both, or of neither. If the latter, then another generation may or 
may not bring out the traits of and the physical resemblance to one 

57 



Heredity. 

or both. Probably either the ^gg or the spermatozoon could 
furnish sufficient material and vitality to permit of the first stages 
in the successful development of the little child. Each might under 
favorable conditions develop alone. Nature does not ordinarily 
mean this to take place, however, and arranges for an intermingling 
of the parts of the two cells. When the ovum has been fertiHzed 
and has advanced in its growth it spHts into a number of small cells, 
which also grow and multiply, and in so doing form the organs and 
the various structures of the body. In evolving into a body they 
show features and habits peculiar to one or both parents. All of 
the early formed cells contain almost strictly equal contributions 
from the male and female nuclear chromosomes. Most observers 
agree that the female nuclear chromosomes contain and transmit 
the characteristics and peculiarities of the mother, and the male 
chromosomes those of the male parent. The yolk of the ovum 
supplies the nutriment for both developing elements. During all of 
this process certain cells have been laid aside from the body building, 
and kept apart to form the germcells of the next generation. Of 
these I shall speak again. 

The laws of modification, and variation, and mutation 
(De Vries) will only receive mention here. For many years Dar- 
win's theory of natural selection was deemed satisfactory in explain- 
ing the changes of evolution. Then it was found that marked 
variations occurred in a certain species, and in individuals of a 
species, that could not be accounted for by any methodical evolu- 
tionary change. Then, as in the evening primrose discovered by 
De Vries in an old potato field, were found isolated plants that 
suddenly and completely changed their form and habits, so as to 
create new types. No transitional links were to be discovered 
between the old and new species. Certain other species called 
"retrograde" may throw off the characteristics of their ancestors. 

One of the most actively debated of all the theories regarding 
heredity has been and still is the question as to the transmission by 
inheritance of acquired qualities or traits. To and fro the battle 
has waged and no conclusion has been reached. No physician denies 
that a diseased parent is likely to have a diseased child; no one 
doubts that drug habits in the father or mother will in all probability 
show their mark upon daughter and son. Alcohol is responsible for 
a large number of our nervous diseases and incapacities, tobacco 
for another large percentage, tea and coffee for a smaller share ! It 
is thoroughly understood that excesses of any sort in the parent 
are reflected at least in a lack of balance by the child. But as to 
whether tuberculosis is transmitted directly as such, or only as the 
tendency to disease, serves all too frequently as the subject of 
discussion and debate. Hereditary syphilis is admitted to be a fact 




1. The pea, showing a longitudinal section of the blossom. Often 

self fertilized. 

2. Hedge willow, usually wind fertilized. The stamens, pistil, the ovary 

and seeds, and the hairs (for wind distribution) are all 
very striking. Reproduction of German wall charts. 



Heredity, 

even in the second generation. No contradiction can blot out the 
proof afforded by the thousands of sorry, Httle old men and women 
born into the world just to die, or to live long enough to infect 
others and start them on their way towards sorrow and the grave. 
We are not concerned so much in this chapter with Mendel's Law 
of Dominance, as we are with the influence of good and bad habits 
and of proper living and of misdoing upon life and health. Yet 
his principle is one that has its bearing even in sociology and is 
worthy of brief treatment by way of introduction to our more 
strictly personal discussion. Mendel was a plain man who became 
a priest and had for a hobby hybridization or crossing of the 
different types of peas. He chose twenty-two varieties, and during 
eight years experimented and studied and watched to determine if 
possible the law of inheritance among the hybrid progeny. He 
studied the color and shape of the seeds and of the pods, ripe and 
unripe, also 'the position of the flowers (axial or terminal), and 
the length of the stem (tall or short). He investigated these 
characteristics singly, first cross-fertilizing the plants artificially, 
and removing the stamens of the fertilized flowers before they were 
ripe in order to avoid inbreeding by self fertilization. He found 
that of each pair of characters (seeds round or angular, stamens 
long or short, color of seed coats white, grey, brown, etc.) one only 
persisted to the almost complete exclusion of the other. The char- 
acters that persisted he called "dominant" ; those which tended to 
die out he termed "recessive." Thus he called dominant charac- 
teristics tallness, roundness of seeds, purple flowers, and colored 
seedcoats; while he named recessive dwarfishness, wrinkled seeds, 
white flowers, and white seedcoats. The law of dominance was 
his most important finding. He allowed the second generation of 
plants to fertilize themselves and found that their progeny went 
back to the two original forms, in a proportion of 3 to i. Of over 
1,000 plants (1^)64) 187 were tall, 2'/y were dwarfed. When the 
tall plants were allowed to fertilize themselves they bred one- 
third of pure dominants, which when self-fertilized again gave a 
mixture of dominants and recessives, in proportion 3 to i. 

These rules have been found to hold with mice and certain 
other animals just as with the pea and its pod and stem. Crossing 
a grey and a white mouse yields mice of the dominant color, grey. 
If these grey mice are bred together (inbred) their progeny are 
grey and white, 3 to i. If the recessives (the white mice) are 
inbred they breed only white mice. If the greys are inbred into the 
next generation one-third produce grey mice, and the other two- 
thirds yield greys and whites. Thus there are three possible results 
of Mendel's law, wherever there are dominants and recessives : 
(i) there are dominants that always breed true to the dominant 

."59 



Heredity. 

character; (2) there are recessives that breed true to the recessives, 
and (3) there are dominants that are called impure, which on self- 
fertilization or inbreeding give both dominant and recessive 
characteristics in the proportion of 3 to i. 

An interesting series of changes similar to this is seen in the 
breeding of Malay fowls, as for instance those with the ''walnut'' 






The laws of dominance in fowls. A. Simple serrated comb. B. Peacomb. 
C. Rosecomb. (After Thomson.) 

combs. When a walnut combed fowl is bred with a rose or pea 
comb fowl, the walnut feature is found to be dominant, and the 
rose and pea are recessive. The alterations are dominant and reces- 
sive just as in the crossbreeding of the pea, and by similar methods 
the variations in type of comb can be secured (vid. fig. above). The 
significance of Mendel's law, if it can be shown to hold with men 
and women, will be almost beyond estimate. In many plants and 

60 



Heredity. 

grains and in certain animals the law holds. Who will first 
determine its pertinence in the case of humankind? Hygiene and 
unhygiene of the parent hold a new significance in the light of one's 
children's characteristics and health and disease. 

Tobacco, alcohol, lead, tuberculosis, and syphilis in the life of 
the parent, and indeed any and every systemic infection, may and 
certainly do have a vital influence upon the life and future of the 
infant. Whether in just the way that Mendel's law would suggest, 
or in some other more or less serious fashion, matters little so long 
as the deterioration or elevation of the species is concerned. Horses 
and cattle have been studied and cultivated until the stock breeder 
can now work miracles with his farm. A fine sire is used as the 
dominant force in breeding a whole generation in the case of horses 
or cows. His progeny also are used to transmit his own strong, 
healthy qualities to the herd. Thus, inbreeding has its advantages 
up to a certain point ; then follows loss of strength, of fertility, and 
of size and development. Inbreeding in the human family is a matter 
of vital importance only in so far as it tends to bring to the surface 
latent weaknesses and taints in the two stocks that have united in 
parentage. Thus two cousins, or even a brother and sister, m.ight 
bear physically healthy children, providing both are absolutely 
perfect in physical makeup. Once, however, presuppose a family 
taint of heredity on either side and the marriage of near relatives 
seems almost certain to develop and even to exaggerate that taint 
or disability. For this and for no other simply physical reason is 
human inbreeding interdicted, and in certain sections of this 
country, even by law. 

The points that are to be emphasized in our study of human 
beings are the following: (i) that healthy stock produces only 
healthy stock; (2) that unhealthy stock produces only unhealthy 
stock, and (3) that by deliberate hygienic methods many mothers 
and fathers who are bringing into the world unhealthy progeny 
might easily be beginning in childhood days to avoid harmful habits 
and influences and prepare both body and mind with a view to the 
future health of their children. Thus fewer men would smoke and 
drink, I believe, were it made clear to them that they were thereby 
forming dominant characteristics that will inevitably show them- 
selves in some form in their boys and girls. Fewer women perhaps 
would cramp their bodies, especially their thoracic and abdominal 
organs, with clothing that hinders and prevents a full supply of 
oxygen and rest, if they were taught that as they are so in a 
measure will their girl and boy children be. 

Physical features, the color of the hair, the form of the teeth, 
the color of the skin, the walk, the mental attitude, the manner of 
living and thinking, are transmitted from father to son and from 

61 



Heredity. 

mother to daughter in a manner that is often so striking as to be 
amusing. Sometim.es environment explains this to a degree; more 
often it can be understood only on a basis of inheritance. The 
character of a son or daughter of an alcoholic or a libertine or of a 
tobacco habitue may be fine and true, but we have learned as 
physicians to expect the boy and girl of such a parentage to inherit 
defects at least on the mental and nervous side. I know two 
brothers who boast of their healthy ancestry, both of whom are 
drinkers and smokers. What do we find in their families? In the 
one a son with a heart whose valvular embarrassment has twice 
nearly cost him his life ; and a daughter whose last four years have 
been those of an hysterical invalid, unable to rise from a mental 
and nervous incompetence, the cause of which she fully realizes. 
The brother of this man, also a moderate alcoholic (both "always 
drinking a little"), has one girl "highstrung, nervous, has been 
hysterical," and a boy, small, and thin, and ready to blow aw^ay. 

Heredity Chart 
Alcohol 

Casi^ reported by the Autbor 
"ABC" 

Father Mother 

Drinks constantly, beer and whiskey, Uses no alcohol, 

often to excess healthy, strong woman. 

Son Daughter 

Chronic valvular heart disease, Hysteria major with convulsions, 
Varicose veins of the legs, coma (unconsciousness), 

Suppurative appendicitis, and temporary paralysis. 

Pneumonia. 

The tuberculous father or mother gives little or no promise of 
healthy children. The debate still goes on as to whether tubercu- 
losis is really inherited. I have seen more than a few autopsies 
of babies born dead with unmistakable tuberculous pneumonia or 
dead soon after birth. But leaving aside the actual inheritance of 
a tuberculous process, one does not have to look far for that which 
is called a "predisposition to tuberculosis." A narrow chest, an 
occasional cough, a "tendency to catch cold," enlarged cervical 
(neck) glands, recurrent pneumonias, a high percentage of valvular 
heart disease, rachitis (rickets), a high early mortality, a great 
frequency of frank tuberculosis developing in young adult life, 
these things constitute the inheritance of the children of the 
tuberculous. 

62 



Heredity. 

Tuberculosis is also one of the active causes of abortion and of 
stillbirth, though by no means as energetic a factor in this field as 
syphilis or gonococcus disease. V. Vogel has recently written that 
"The district of the highest infant mortality in Bavaria is inhabited 
by a population of small height, small fitness for military service, 
and high tuberculous mortality." The belief is strong among many 
physicians that tuberculosis, like most of the other acute infections, 
is constantly a bacteriemia, i. e., a blood infection, just as it is also 
an infection of every part of the body. The toxin or poison is tiie 
most active factor at work. This is distributed through the blood and 
lymph streams, as a rule, from some localized focus, such as the 
lungs, or some other organ attacked by the disease. The tubercle 



r 



/I 





Kyf- 








K-^^ 




■""t^ 


! 


M 


i 

i 


^X^ 


i 

1 


i^ 



\ 




' -J I. 



m 















i 



Hybridization in wheat. (After Bifien.) A. Standup wheat. B. 

Bearded wheat. C. The hybrid, showing the dominant 

character of the beardless condition. 

bacilli have been demonstrated now and again in the free blood, also 
in the walls of the blood vessels, which they occasionally attack. 
This being so it will not be surprising to hear in due time of a change 
of front on the part of those who teach that tuberculosis is not an 

63 



Heredity, 

inheritable condition. My own belief is that many of the cases of 
pulmonary tuberculosis that we see developing in young people at 
the time of puberty or in early adult years are examples of a latent 
hereditary tuberculosis that has waited for a convenient time to 
manifest itself. In any event all recognize the fact that the children 
of the tuberculous furnish a large percentage of the new infections, 
and that the child of tuberculous parentage starts life with more 
than an ordinary handicap. The feeling is a growing one that the 
manifestly tuberculous should not marry. The mortality among 
tuberculous mothers is very high, and the added responsibility of 
the tainting of the children of such a marriage renders it a question 
of grave moment as to where right ends and wrong begins. Several 
states have already enacted laws forbidding the issuance of a license 
certificate for marriage of the tuberculous. 

Alcoholism, as already stated, forms another of the conditions 
transmissible in one form or another from parent to child. By this 
I do not mean that the habit of intemperance is born in the child of 
alcoholic parentage. I mean rather that the weak or absent will 
power, the limpness of character, the feebleness of intellect, the 
highly strung or unstrung nervous mechanism, the epilepsy and 
insanity that are so frequent in the progeny of alcoholics, the lack 
of physical resistance to pneumonia, tuberculosis, and other infec- 
tions — all these constitute an inheritance that can without hesitation 
be stamped as typically alcoholic in origin and character. Whether 
or not the actual taste for alcohol is inherited calls for no discussion 
here. The opportunity and the temptation are ever present. The 
son or daughter of the alcoholic has seldom the mental or moral 
backbone to refuse. More and more have the nations that have 
indulged in what was supposedly harmless moderate drinking awak- 
ened to a realization of the fact that steady moderate drinking is 
even more dangerous and destructive of the vital tissues and organs 
than an occasional spree. R. Weichselbaum has recently demon- 
strated an influence of chronic moderate alcoholism on the procrea- 
tive power of men that has not heretofore been appreciated. In a 
series of examinations of the testicles of alcohoHc subjects he 
showed an almost constant atrophy (shrinkage and contraction) of 
these organs. 

T. Laitinen has also clearly demonstrated the havoc wrought 
among the progeny of those using even the minimum quantity of the 
so-called mild alcoholic drinks, even of one-third of a pint of beer 
daily in the man's dietary. 

Tobacco has also been shown beyond question to exert an 
influence on the progeny. It is impossible to say into just how 
many cases or just how far tobacco sends its influence, since alcohol 
nearly always accompanies its twin drug, which does not therefore 







1. Bee leaving the milkweed with pollen yokes attached to its feet. 

(Bailey.) 

2. Insect seeking nectar in the sweet pea and carrying away pollen 

on its back. (Bailey.) 

3. Capitula protected by warlike ants against a beetle. (Kerner.) 

4. Transference of pollen to insects by means of a plant explosive 

apparatus. (Kerner.) 



Heredity. 

admit of study altogether by itself. We have a clear enough 
picture, however, of the physiological action of tobacco, and a 
definite knowledge of the many cases of acute tobacco poisoning 
that apply for help at the doctor's office. From these we cannot fail 
to conclude that the scars left by tobacco are not only placards of 
nervous injury, but that they are of a type that must imply lowered 
vitality, and the natural effects of both these states upon posterity. 
Thus the question of tobacco heredity is a phase upon which we 
dare not fail to touch. Its importance is only now beginning to be 
appreciated. In France, C. Fleig (Compt. Rend. Hebd. April, 1908), 
has subjected the young of guinea pigs to inhalations of tobacco 
smoke. Not one so treated has developed into a healthy or normal 
pig. When the pregnant mother pig was exposed to the smoke 
the pigs were either born dead or else were very little and far below 
the normal weight. No study has as yet been made to determine 
the number of infant deaths due to destruction of the male element 
as the result of the father's tobacco. Yet this vital principle is 
nervous tissue, and all other nervous tissues suffer and die. There 
can be little or no doubt that few or none of the nicotine-soaked 
individuals that are dignified by the name of father can fail to have 
left a tobacco impress upon their children. Whether this be in the 
form of simple ill health, or lack of vitality, or nervousness so-called, 
or susceptibility to disease, or whether it shape itself as imbecility 
or insanity or epilepsy, or addiction to drug habits, or irresponsi- 
bility, and lowered powers of moral resistance, — in either or all of 
these the birds will in the fullness of time come home to roost, and 
credit be paid where credit is due. Oliver Wendell Holmes, himself 
a distinguished physician and scientist, asked years ago, "What if 
you are drinking a little too much wine and smoking a little too 
much tobacco, and your son takes after you, and your poor grand- 
son's brain, being a little injured in physical texture, he loses the 
fine moral sense on which you pride yourself, and doesn't see the 
difference between signing another man's name to a draft and his 
own ?" 

This is a pertinent inquiry! What, indeed, if your son and 
daughter and mine are less physically, and mentally, and morally 
fit because of indulgences allowed ourselves? May posterity hark 
back to our private habits based on the sanction of centuries, and 
upon the approval of participating doctors, lawyers, clergymen, all 
fathers now or to be, — and more and more partaking mothers and 
mothers to be? 

Still another great problem is the disposition of those who are 
defective nervously and mentally, the insane, imbeciles, feeble- 
minded, degenerates, and the epileptics. About a billion dollars 
were spent in one year in the United States in the attempt to render 



Heredity, 

healthy and pure the strains of horses and cattle, even of hogs, of 
grain and other food plants. Up to very recently not one penny was 
spent in the attempt to prevent the certain transmission of these 
degenerate nervous and mental states. We tolerate among the best 
and purest human beings conditions that which we would not for a 
moment consider in the stable or pen, the breeding of health with 
disease, the mating of influences that will insure further physical 
degeneracy instead of the promise of integrity of the mind and body 
in the offspring as the real justification of marriage and sex union, 
Boetius informs us that Scotland was in the habit of promptly 
gelding all the insane, the epileptic, and all those afflicted with trans- 
missible disease. We of a later day allow those who are manifestly 
degenerate, not only to marry with those who are not, but with 
others equally unfit, and to breed an ever increasing race of degen- 
erates, all sexually overdeveloped, and therefore still further a 
menace to society. Of the so-called "backward" children it is esti- 
mated that no less than three-fifths are hopelessly defective. The 
courts and the jails are full of unrecognized defectives attracting 
attention in the role of criminals. The institutions and private 
homes are increasingly full of the representatives of the defective 
class. Any and all may and frequently do marry and intermarry, 
seduce and rape, without restraint or control other than the official 
oversight (which is practically no oversight) exercised over the 
community at large. The various State institutions for the feeble- 
minded have published extensive records demonstrating the cer- 
tainty with which degeneracy springs from the union of defectives. 

Every physician can point to several homes in which are 
instances of feeble-mindedness among the children. Whence do 
these things come? Barr of the Pennsylvania Institute mentions 
one of our best families in which are "five children, an aunt and two 
uncles all feeble-minded. Another family in seven generations 
numbering 138 individuals, records 10 stillborn children, 15 
premature births, 16 insane, 7 imbeciles, 3 epileptics, and 32 with 
mental peculiarities so pronounced as to occasion remark. Of the 
138 there remain 80 apparently normal." I have now in my care 
a young man, a case of dementia praecox, the son of a high strung 
man and a neurasthenic woman, two of whose brothers were insane. 
I have another patient so nervous as to be a trial to himself, with a 
nervous impediment in his speech that makes him a sad trial to 
others. His sister is an epileptic. The father and mother were 
both neurasthenics of an exaggerated type, and on all sides of the 
family are to be found instances of insanity and neurotic taint. 

Skillman of the New Jersey State Village for Epileptics has 
reported a case of epileptic parents with four children, the first 
three of whom were epileptic, and the fourth feeble-minded. In 

66 



Heredity. 

another instance an epileptic woman was married to a feeble- 
minded man. One of several epileptic daughters from this union 
was married to a feeble-minded man. Eight children resulted, of 
which one died in infancy, and seven were epileptic. Two of the 
daughters had illegitimate children. In still another case an 
epileptic woman who had spent most of her life in the poorhouse 
had seven children, no two of which were by the same father. One 
epileptic daughter of the woman (by a feeble-minded father) gave 
birth to one illegitimate child. The mother left the almshouse, 
lived in the woods with a feeble-minded man, who gave her three 
feeble-minded sons, one of whom married the feeble-minded sister 
of an epileptic. 

This problem of the defectives and degenerates, mental, 
physical and sexual, seems almost hopeless unless society very soon 
manifests a willingness to submit to the rigid control of marriage, 
the isolation of those mentally and physically unfit, and the asex- 
ualization of all males and females who have been demonstrated 
to be in the permanently defective class. The latter measure seems 
to promise more definite beneficial results than any other suggested. 
In Pennsylvania, for instance, there are today over io,ckx) cases of 
acknowledged imbecility, of which about 3,500 are isolated under 
institutional care. The dominant impulse in every one of these lives 
is oversexualization. Many cases similar to these have been 
operated upon in other states, especially in Indiana where Dr. Sharp 
has operated upon over 500 males, 176 at their own request. In 
every case there seems to have been a decided physical, mental, and 
moral gain that fully justified the simple, almost painless procedure. 
The sexual desire appeared to be less marked, and what is of 
greater import, the seminal discharge no longer contained sperma- 
tozoa. The patient almost invariably became tractable and displayed 
a better disposition. In the male the operation requires only local 
anesthesia and practically no inconvenience, even immediately 
following. In the girl or woman removal of the ovaries requires a 
more radical abdominal procedure, and, while just as thoroughly 
indicated, calls for even greater hesitation before venturing the final 
diagnosis. The time will no doubt come, in which, as we look back, 
there will seem to have been scant reason for our slowness to 
appreciate the seriousness of a short-sighted neglect of this class of 
citizens. The least we can all do at the present moment is to see 
that they do not marry, and that they are prevented from bringing 
into the community other beings of the same or a more degenerate 
order than themselves. 

Of the inheritance of the effects of lead poisoning I shall say 
little. Its influences are upon the arterial and upon the nervous 
systems, and it is well understood that the progeny of parents who 

67 



Heredity. 

have been saturated with salts of the drug, tend to physical, 
especially to nervous, depreciation and degeneracy. The influence of 
lead poisoning upon pregnant women is most malign, the ratio of 
abortions and stillbirths numbering only fewer from this influence 
than as the outcome of syphilitic parentage. It is necessary that we 
recognize the activity of this influence, since chronic lead poisoning 
is usually unsuspected until grave harm has been accomplished. It 
is nearly always accidental and occurs usually among those working 
in white lead, or in painters, glaziers, and others who use the 
various compounds of the metal. 

Finally we come to syphilis, the scourge and the decimator of 
women and little children. In Chapter XIII is given a brief medical 
description of the disease, of its ubiquity, and of its malign influ- 
ence upon the community. Everywhere in our midst are seen signs 
of its transmission by parents to children. Frequent miscarriages, 
polymortality among children in a given family, successive deform- 
ities and malformations in the children are now looked upon as very 
suggestive of syphilitic parentage. Fournier has demonstrated that 
paternal syphilis furnishes the lowest mortality in the progeny 
(28 per 100), and that maternal syphilis is vastly more dangerous 
(60 per 100), while syphilis in both parents gives the maximum 
(68 per 100). In hospital practice the mortality of children born of 
syphilitic mothers rises to 84 and even 86 per 100. In one year 
25,000 syphilitic children died in infancy in France alone. The 
syphilitic manifestations in children who survive the first weeks of 
life may be classed under two heads, the dystrophies and the 
degeneracies. In the first class may be included all forms of failure 
of natural development, resulting in defective conditions of the 
nose, lip, palate, the teeth, the eye, the ear, of the heart, of the 
cranial bones, in club feet, in rachitis, in ''marasmus", in all forms 
of monstrosities. 

The second class is very large. The mentally defective, the 
epileptics, the feeble-minded, the paralytics (locomotor ataxia, 
75-80 per cent.), the insane (paresis, etc.) form a section of the 
community that speaks for itself both in the matter of cost of 
maintenance, and with respect to the danger which it holds over 
humanity. The syphilitic father and mother may or may not 
experience the fearful responsibility of the infection of a child if 
they have both been thoroughly and intelligently treated. If not 
treated and cured they almost certainly will! Inasmuch as the 
possibility of cure is by no means too certain, it behooves the public 
to stir itself in preventing clandestine and public prostitution, and 
in correcting those other social conditions that have led to the 
syphilizing of so many hundreds of thousands of the American and 
of every other people. 

68 





1. Linaria or toad flax. A flowering spike, sectioned to show the four 

pollen vessels. Also a bee seeking the honey. 

2. The tulip, in section, showing the stamens, the pistil, the ovary and 

ovules, also the roots. Reproductions of German wall charts. 



Heredity. 

The Cure. 

There never was an evil that had not a remedy which in 
process of time uncovered itself and helped to correct the abuse. 
There may be suggested four main lines along which we may 
work: 

(I) The prevention of the marriage of diseased persons. This 
implies the education of the people in the facts regarding sex 
hygiene, v/hich must be accomplished in the face of the knowledge 
that it is necessarily a slow process. 

(II) Intelligent breeding. The deliberate choice and marriage 
by men and women of healthy human strains possessing the desired 
qualities of mind, heart, and body. From such unions only strength 
and vigor will flow. This will require the early sex education of 
children and young people. 

(III) Asexualization of the unfit, defective, and that class of 
the incurably diseased that menaces society through lack of sexual 
control. 

(IV) Compulsory reporting of all cases of contagious disease, 
including syphilis and gonococcus disease. Jail and long terms 
of imprisonment will some day be prescribed for any who can be 
shown to have knowingly transmitted infectious disease from his 
or her own person to that of another. 

I. With regard to the prevention of marriage of persons 
afflicted with transmissible disease, I venture to suggest that no 
one can prevent such a mishap save the one most concerned, the 
marrying man or woman. No law can insure safety because no 
law can be enforced ! The girl or woman can assure herself beyond 
all peradventure as to the health of her prospective husband by 
a careful inquiry into his past record, as well as that of the 
present, the latter requiring no other guarantee than a health 
certificate from her own physician. When women know how 
closely loose morals and physical disease are bound together, they 
will not marry men whose past is not as fair as the day. If the 
man refuses such a test the girl should refuse marriage, provided 
she would preserve her own health and avoid crippled or dead 
children. Any rule of this nature to be effective must apply to 
both sexes. Women have never been slow in meeting such an 
issue. 

II. Concerning the deliberate breeding of healthy children 
from healthy parents, it need only be said that such a plan need 
by no means exclude love as the prime inspiration of mating. A 
girl will not be likely to love that which is unhealthy or unclean 
if she realizes the fact before she loves. It will be necessary to 
train her in a power of discrimination and a sense of the need 
of care that will compel her to look ahead. Love need not be blind 



Heredity. 

at such fearful cost. 

III. Asexualization speaks for itself. If thousands of over- 
sexed irresponsibiles and criminals walk the streets and country 
lanes today threatening our best and our humblest women, how else 
are these to be safeguarded? The main protection afforded by 
the measure will consist in the knowledge that there is an ability 
and willingness on the part of the public under certain definite 
conditions to deprive a man of a power he will hesitate to forfeit, 
namely, his ability to father a child either in his own home or 
outside of it. I imagine that the strict enforcement of such a 
measure will be necessary only for a little time. When the white 
man and the negro have both been served notice that woman-^ 
white or black — is sacred, violence and assault will cease through 
the fear that is native in every sexual libertine or irresponsible, 
rather than because of the respect for law as such. 

IV. There are constantly taking place marriages of infected 
men with clean women, the man being fully conscious of his con- 
tagious state, and subjecting the woman, usually his wife, to almost 
certain participation in his disease. Physicians have heretofore 
considered themselves bound by the restrictions of the professional 
secret to withhold the warning from the girl and to permit the 
deliberate crime against womankind and motherhood. Compulsory 
reporting of the venereal diseases by the number of the patient 
(not by name) is a method already being adopted by one com- 
munity after another. It will go far toward protecting womankind. 
There is no jail sentence long enough and no imprisonment can 
requite a woman or man for his or her deliberate infection with 
either of the two social diseases. The prospect of a jail sentence 
will serve as a deterrent, and will enable the physician to prevent 
many a criminal union, such as heretofore he has, partly through 
cowardice, appeared unable to influence or control. 

The struggle for the survival of the fittest, and for success as 
man measures it, is real and earnest. Through his own misdoing 
mankind has set the odds against him. He can win, but every 
energy must be bent to overcome the difficulties in the way. He 
must needs even forego certain pleasures that appear to him 
inocuous, if by so doing he may prevent another life from falling 
under the shadow. Where the life and health of another are at 
stake he plays a desperate risk who trifles with the retribution of 
eternity. The final punishment will be unbearable, even if it be 
only the everlasting knowledge of a blasted life begun and ended in 
thoughtless and unwilling paternity. 

The reader cannot fail to gather from this brief message the 
thought that only those things are fair that welcome exposure to 
the full light of day ; only those worthy that lift you and me, Cains, 

70 



Heredity. 

and the Abels at our side, into such a perfect health of body and 
spirit that we may occupy our ten talents to full advantage and 
return them to the Great Giver with proper increase in His own 
good time. 

"My garden must be beautiful; 
For when the shadows play 
In lengthening shapes along the wall, 
And comes the cool of day, 
Perchance my Lord might come to see 
The place where roses bloom for me. 

And if He ask to come within 

This house of mine to rest, 

How fair and sweet the rooms should be 

For such a wondrous Guest! 

Twere better far to keep them so, 

Lest He might come before I know." 



71 



Chapter V. 

What must Both the Boy and Girl in due time be Taught? 

According to the age, we reply, tell the boy and girl everything 
concerning which his or her individual sex nature prompts an 
inquiry, and a little more rather than less if the excess make for 
seriousness and reverence and simplicity in the telling ! In other 
words, answer clearly and fully every question! There should 
ever be held in mind that aged child, already mentioned, who had 
lived a long life and still could say in his ignorance (far from 
innocence) "God help the women and children who may suffer," 
and yet feel no tug upon his own heartstrings nor upon his purse 
latchet by way of suggestion that upon him, not upon God, devolves 
the duty of helping the innocent victims to the extent of his power. 

Keeping this in mind, it would seem necessary that the teaching 
of the embryo citizen should eventually develop into a full instruc- 
tion in sex matters, including even an understanding of the diseases 
that follow the misuse of the sex function. But at the start 
distinctly "no!" The child will usually, and very early, indicate 
just where Nature has left it lacking in sex understanding. Usually 
the child's first question is prompted by a recognition of the fact 
that the anatomy of the two sexes is not the same. How well I 
remember the amused ripple that ran over the audience of a 
distinguished professor of literature when he told his hearers of 
a problem in social economics that had been broached at his table 
by his little girl of four ! She had noticed in the bath that Johnnie, 
her small brother, was not formed in all respects like unto herself. 
Evidently the variance had caused her some concern and distress, 
because, after pondering in silence over her food she said solemnly, 
"Mother, Johnnie ain't made just like me." A silence ensued that 
almost cried out, involving every member of the family. "But," 
the philosopher proceeded, "I think, Mother, that Johnnie will come 
all right some day; don't you. Mother?" This Httle student of her 
brother's anatomical architecture serves as the prototype of the 
child world in its ignorance and innocence. I have already inti- 
mated that later ignorance does not imply innocence, rather 
someone's guilt or negligence. But in the very early years the two 
are frequently found walking hand in hand. 

Is the young child totally devoid of sex understanding? Does 

7« 



What Must he Taught? 

it learn anything understandingly by observation? I think not, 
at least in so far as purely sex matters are concerned. I was 
recently much surprised in conversation with a prominent student 
of and lecturer to boys to hear him say that "all boys understand 
the principles of reproduction without any teaching." Evidently 
he thought that he had understood them by intuition, because 
he was equally surprised when I asserted my belief that no boy 
or girl understands the smallest item or feature of sex functioning 
until it is explained either in a clean or an unclean manner, on the 
one hand by one who cares for the listener, or on the other by one 
who rolls as a sweet morsel the tale. Hundreds of adults, male 
and female, more women than men, come to the physician in total 
ignorance of the meaning of the various sex phenomena, and 
require intelligent instruction from the rudiments up. With regard 
to the simplest signs of oncoming puberty in both sexes astonishing 
ignorance is experienced, though the children have constantly 
afforded opportunities to thinking parents for sane and protective 
instruction. Only a few days ago a Judge of a court in one of our 
large municipalities came to me with a query as to the accuracy 
of my statement in a published article as to the normality of an 
individual who shov,^ed sex phenomena that stamp a boy or man 
as being physically and morally healthy as do no other signs, (vid. 
pp. 121). He had from boyhood up to old age regarded, and had evi- 
dently been taught to regard them as evidences of disease. He is 
one of the legion that render im.perative the teaching of sex hygiene. 
Too often the teaching that is neglected in the home is supplied 
in a vicious manner outside. From school-companion, street 
gamin, stable boy, or even the nursery maid, comes fragmentary, 
tainted information that poisons rather than supplies a need. 
Invariably the child seeks instruction on its sex side, and fails to 
understand why the want remains unfulfilled. Happy that little 
one that is forefended by wise and brave parents who see to it as a 
sacred duty and trust that each sign of development is antedated 
by the knowledge that will prepare the little wayfarer for an easy 
progress along the road. 

We have already established by experience two points. The 
questions will come early, and probably from a clear sky. They 
will almost certainly have to do with the sex organs, and will call 
for answers that involve vastly greater knowledge on the part of the 
parent teacher than is necessary for the little inquirer. Just as the 
tiny birds open their mouths regardless of what is to be placed 
therein, provided it be sufficient in size to fill a void, so the main 
requisite for early sex instruction is that it be true and ample, and 
that it satisfy for the moment the inquiring mind. 

Perhaps in every child the easiest beginning is made with 

73 



What Must be Taught? 

the pet animals in the house or the yard. Rare is the home that 
has not known the Htter of puppies, or the day the kittens arrived. 
Even a barren home can supply a chicken's ^gg, and even the city 
streets may furnish the rooster and the hen. The shop window 
supplies an aquarium of goldfish with the opportunity of telling 
the story of the tiny spawn. I do not mean by suggesting these 
homely object lessons to intimate that skilful teaching is not 
now being done. In many centers, by rare women and still rarer 
men it is already under way. But it must become general, the 
accepted, the expected thing! At present it is so unusual for a boy 
or girl to receive instruction on sex topics that the venturesome par- 
ent or school-teacher is regarded either with unbounded admiration 
or with horror, depending upon the intelligence of the critic and 
his stage of development from the century-old cocoon of false 
modesty. Long before the reasoning faculty has become acute, 
the eye and ear of the boy and girl are attentive, and through them 
as almost unconscious channels, absorption is already under way. 
Many an object lesson is thus stored up against the time of boy 
or girl stress and need. If you harbor a shadow of a doubt as to the 
closeness and accuracy of their powers of observation, watch a 
five-year-old stroke the broken wing of a favorite bird friend! 
Let him tell you after his own fashion the sorrow of the nest, and 
let him reproduce the call of the mouths that must be fed! 
He knows without teaching that the immediate pain of the mother 
bird has an import altogether secondary to the integrity of the bird 
home. Allow him to follow his bent and the average boy will 
discover himself a philosopher, and by no means one of the type 
that elicited from Cromwell that fine bit of irony, "I beseech you, 
gentlemen, by the tender mercies of our Lord, that ye conceive 
it possible that sometimes ye may be mistaken." The boy is open 
to suggestion and correction. At his best his mind is an open book. 
His eye is as confidently blue as the heavens, and his instinctive 
challenge, when once he has been rightly taught the magnetism 
and winsomeness of the Creator and Master Friend of children, 
will run in the following strain, — 

"Help me, O help me to be a man. 
After the pattern of Him !" 

The author treasures jealously today and trusts he always 
will possess the heart of a boy ! It is the most honest thing he has 
carried into manhood ! He proposes to lead the discussion of the 
material to be furnished the boy and girl along the lines suggested 
by that abundant trace that remains of the boy in him. 

He believes that it will be useful to picture for the father and 
mother reader the average child need, as he himself learned it 

74 




I. White berried mistletoe. Male plant growing upon an appletree. 

Berries and sections of seeds. Fertilized usually by the 

woodpecker. 

2. Field buttercup, showing sex organs, honey gland, and section of the 

ovary. Reproduction of German wall chart. 



What Must be Taught f 

perforce in an uninstructed boyhood. In the Hght of the experience 
of many other untaught boys who have trusted their confidences 
to or have been entrusted to him he believes that the greatest lack 
and the almost unvaried gap in the child's early life consists in the 
failure of the parents to supply the fundamental teaching that 
was so sadly missed by them in their own childhood days. 

From nature's object lessons then can be pointed many a 
brief talk, in preparation for which study must be indulged in by 
the prospective teacher, but which fits in ever so satisfactorily 
and simply with the enjoyment of the everyday occurrences out of 
doors. If by reading a book through from cover to cover upon 
insects or fishes or toads or birds or any of the animal forms the 
father or mother succeeds in equipping himself or herself for a 
one-minute talk demanded without notice some fine day, the effort 
will have been well repaid in the consciousness of meeting an 
issue usually avoided, and instead of cowardly defeat a victory 
won ! Then come the flowers ! Usually, I think, one hears them 
offered in advance of the home animals as the most convenient 
means for the instruction of the child. For the adult learner the 
flowers do indeed present advantages from the standpoint of the 
teacher, especially in the description of the propagation of the 
various forms of life. With children it matters little whether we 
begin with the flowers or their animal friends. There is no false 
modesty on the surface of plant or flower study. The prude finds 
it diflBcult to discover in botany a place large enough to sit down. 
If all the pupils were actual children there would be no difficulty 
in the teaching. Unfortunately there must be equipped at once an 
army of parents and sex hygiene teachers. Until they are ready and 
prepared no sane movement can more than begin. At once we rec- 
ognize the fact that the adult has, by inheritance and training, lost 
that supreme asset of real childhood, that genuine modesty of com- 
mon sense that sees only good, or is willing to ignore the embarrass- 
ment involved in the investigation of unsavory problems which 
must be handled for the public benefit. In childhood curiosity 
and desire for knowledge extend from the midmeal appetite and 
an intense interest in the pantry to such concerns as the distress 
experienced by the professor's little girl over the supposedly imper- 
fect configuration of her baby brother. 

In the adult the investigation must begin with the same simple 
principles, of male and female plant, of stamen and pistil, of pollen 
and ovule, and of the persistence of sex from the single cell to 
the highly developed and complex animal form. Ever must we 
recur to the necessity of the union of the male and female germ, 
and of the influence of heredity from the single parent, as well as 
from both parents, in flower and insect and bird, up to man. In 

75 



What Must be Taught? 

the case of both child-adult and adult-child in due time will come 
the aH important questions that must be met just as intelligently 
and just as completely in the one as in the other. Specimens of 
these are, "Where did I come from?" and "How was I born?" and 
"Why does the doctor come when Mother has a baby?" 

In a later chapter will be discussed the vital matter of the 
teacher. Just now we are concerned with the substance of the 
lesson taught. It has become the conviction of the author that upon 
the wisdom and truthfulness of the answer to the query, "Whence 
did I come ?" depends much of the future comradeship of the parent 
and the child. It is either a frank, open, mutual, communicative 
and responsive alliance, or one based at least partially upon doubt 
and suspicion that something is held in reserve, not only on the 
part of the parent, but of the child, and as a consequence a new 
distrust of the parent's self. The study of plant and flower life 
and of reproduction in the lower and higher animals, if thorough, 
will not only help equip the father to teach his boy and the mother 
the girl of her home, but will enable both to meet on this common 
ground children of either sex in nature study. If wisely done, it 
will be reverently done! The moment the advent of the tiny baby 
is explained, with the flower or the kitten as the object lesson, 
there is signalized a bond of union between the teacher and the 
taught that comes very close to real parenthood, even be the pupil 
someone's else child. 

I think it very important that the tiny boy and the tiny girl 
should hear at a very early stage and become used to remembering 
that some day he or she may he the father and mother of a tiny 
child. Close upon this bit of first knowledge should follow the 
information that'^a.y are the father and mother so will the child he. 
Temper, looks, digestion, strength, disposition, all will be reflected 
in some manner upon the little stranger, which in the flower gets 
its father's impress through the pollen and its mother's traits 
through the seedlets at the bottom of the pistil. No child is too 
little, no adult too grown, to find interest in the evidences of 
heredity in generation, and oftentimes to ascribe them to their 
proper cause. There is as little wisdom in ignoring the certainties 
of parental heredity and trait-transmission as in the exaggeration 
of the influence of the parent to the exclusion of individual 
responsibility. The similar striping of the little fish after the mode 
of its father or mother, the adherence to rule in the crossfertiliza- 
tion of plant and animal, the sacrifice of stamina and health to 
inbreeding and overdevelopment, — all these things can be wit- 
nessed and appreciated by young and old children, and all will 
be valuable in teaching the dignity and responsibility of living and 
begetting, and of a proper preparation, even in childhood, for 



What Must be Taught f 

parenthood and citizenship years after. 

I have talked intimately with boys, and even with girls, on 
subjects concerning which their parents had through timidity 
denied them knowledge, and, therefore, subjected them to dan- 
gers and misfortunes, every one of which they should have been 
spared. I have addressed gatherings — rather I have made myself 
one of gatherings — of now boys, now girls, my introduction to 
which by an embarrassed misdirector was more in the form of a 
challenge to handle them than a welcome and invitation to do 
them good. By a simple demonstration of their opportunity to 
understand the nobility and manliness and wonder wrapped up 
in the reproduction of their kind, I have found my way to their 
friendship, and have been touched by the hunger and thirst of their 
boy and girl hearts and minds. They all have hearts and minds 
in common with you and me, and often in richer measure than 
we know ! More than a few times I have been a bit saddened by 
the consequences, apparent even in boy and girl days, of the ignor- 
ance in which their parents had left them. 

Why should a boy or girl be taught the ground facts regarding 
normal sex hygiene? Why open his or her life to matters that 
may easily become dangerous if the tree of knowledge is bent so 
low as to allow of injudicious or over-eating? Why not allow 
Nature to impart knowledge in just such measure as her needs 
require ? 

I reply, first of all, Nature never has shown herself willing to 
express that which it is evidently man's duty to teach, nor to do 
for him that which it is his bounden duty to do for himself and 
his own. Did Nature teach you sex hygiene? With original sin, 
whatever that may be, was implanted in every child of man a 
perverseness which unfitted him to learn of Nature certain things 
which otherwise she might have taught. Among other things, for 
example, curiosity with regard to the sex anatomy is instinctive, 
imperative, and, except in the unusually unobservant boy or girl, 
obtains early satisfaction. In the healthy normal child it demon- 
strates its presence at an exceedingly tender age. This curiosity 
is not a misfortune. It is a hand of help reached out to the parent 
teacher by Mother Nature. Do not refuse her proflfer of 
assistance ! 

Again, this natural inquisitiveness linked with a confident 
trust in the parent, unless used to cause distrust, is a twin oppor- 
tunity, golden and Godgiven, for the mother and father to win the 
intimacy and confidence of the girl and boy. 

Finally, the right of possession of the mind and heart, 
and the future development of the girl and boy into healthy 
adult life rest and depend in no small measure upon precedence. 

77 



What Must be Taught? 

There is a close race on between the home and the street to claim 
the child for all time ! The boy that has had intelligent early 
instruction in Nature's laws and methods concerning himself offers 
unpromising soil for the implanting of unhealthy knowledge and 
immoral half truths. Knowledge is power in this instance, if in 
any! It may be added that pure knowledge leaves indecency no 
room ! 

Are you ready with your next question, open-minded parent, in 
the order that experience leads us to expect that questions will 
follow? **What is normal sex hygiene, if indeed we must teach it?" 

The physician will define hygiene for you as the science of 
health, and his methods of teaching and practice will add the 
important principle that ''true hygiene is health through prevention." 
Mental, moral, and physical cleanliness enters, therefore, in a most 
vital manner into every form of hygiene, and stands as the key- 
stone of the future of any nation. Its synonym is physical and 
moral integrity. Sex hygiene is simply that portion of the study 
that relates to the sex instinct and to reproduction. Once there 
is an understanding as to the meaning and need of early instruction 
in the sex phase of physical and moral health (sex hygiene), we are 
confronted by the insistence of other inquiries. ''What portion of 
sex hygiene can be practically and deliberately taught?" "How 
shall the teaching of the boy differ from that of the girl?" "Shall 
the two sexes be taught together, and from the same material, and 
by the same method?" 

In reply, I would say that assuredly we must commence our 
instruction with the principles that concern both sexes, and these, 
while few in number, are of great importance. 

It would appear that boys and girls alike should understand 
that whether they will or no, aside from all the healthful fun and 
play, life must have and always has, if looked for, a definite beauty, 
joy, and seriousness in its objective. In child language this will 
spell "life means business." God's beauty spun into life will fill it 
with interest, and time will fly because heart and mind and body 
are all at work in bringing to pass the eternal day. 

Childlife has a distinct value. There are those who appreciate 
the importance to the future of manly boys and womanly girls. 
In child language again, boys and girls know that grown people 
look on them, oftentimes, as nuisances. Because of it they lose 
respect for their short-sighted elders. Owing to it, many times, they 
leave the home. The realization stunts their mental and moral 
growth. They grow hard and soon learn not to care. According 
to the type of child this lack of home comradeship courts and 
weds either the worldly success that is born of sheer determination 
to win in the face of difficulty, or far more likely is fascinated by 

78 



What Must be Taught? 

and drinks deeply of spiritual ruin. 

We must teach the children after we have learned the truth 
ourselves that life is trebly vital in its bearing upon the future. 
Heredity and parental responsibility will be better understood if 
the acorn is presented as the miniature of the tree, and the little 
circle of dust and wind as the herald and forerunner of the 
storm king. 

Again, it is of vast importance in both the physical and moral 
worlds that no standards be raised for and imposed upon the girl 
that are not insisted upon in the case of the boy. 

"Don't send a boy where a girl can't go, 
And say, 'There's no danger for boys, you knowj 
Because they have all their wild oats to sow' ; 
There is no more excuse for a boy to be low 
Than a girl. Then, please don't tell him so! 

Don't send a boy where a girl can't go, 
For a boy or girl sin is sin, you know, 
And a good boy's hands are as clean and white, 
And his heart as pure as a girl's tonight!" 

It seems clear that there is something to be taught both boy 
and girl in laying the foundation for instruction in sex hygiene 
that is neither an integral part of that subject, nor easily to be 
separated from it. 

All of these bisex teachings will find their definite application 
in the outline that is to follow. By means of them the imparting 
of sex instruction can be rendered more natural and therefore less 
difficult. 

Sex Instinct. 

Consider for one moment the first appearance of sex sensation 
or instinct. Even in a tiny child there may be experienced the 
first consciousness that it is of a given sex type. Long before 
puberty may be felt pleasurable sensations from irritation of the 
genitalia, which, if indulged, often lead to habits of self-abuse that 
later may prove a stumbling block, and a source of worriment and 
of difficulty in the cure. Appreciated and prevented by intelligent 
and wnde-awake parents these habits seldom are formed and almost 
never gain control. By no means infrequently the sex organs of a 
child are handled by perverted nursery maids, either for their own 
morbid sex gratification, or with deliberately thoughtless or wicked 
influence upon the child. Among the lower classes many instances 
come to light of fathers and mothers teaching little children various 
forms of secret vice. Rare is the child of either sex that escapes 

79 



What Must be Taughtf 

long the boy or girl companion who by word, look, or action calls 
attention to the generative organs, and oftentimes deliberately 
teaches harmful practices based altogether upon the sex function. 
Sex hygiene includes thorough cleanliness of the male and female 
organs. This should be insured to the extent of such scrupulous 
cleanliness as will prevent irritation of the parts, and thus avoid 
a reason for self handling. Knowledge on this subject devolves 
as a duty upon the young mother, and to no less an extent upon 
her busier mate. Probably few young married couples of today 
understand that in both the male and female child there is a 
secretion in and around the genital openings of an oily material 
(smegma) which soon becomes cheesy, and tends to decompose, 
forming a very common source of local irritation. The original 
purpose of this secretion is the lubrication of the parts. Under 
the prepuce (foreskin) of the male, and within the labia and 
vagina of the female, this material can at all times be found. If 
systematically removed it does its work and accomplishes only 
good; if allowed to collect and decompose it does only harm. 
Repeatedly have I seen children of two or three years from whose 
parents the admission was obtained that at no time since birth 
had the genitalia been bathed, and on examination a condition 
discovered that was beyond belief. Nervous and fidgety children, 
sleepless and fretful, are oftentimes punished for handling them- 
selves, whereas proper bathing and cleansing by an intelligently 
instructed nurse or mother (and later by the individual herself or 
himself) from the day of birth until the human body no longer 
is of use, would furnish normal individuals, who need no punish- 
ment, in place of the children that are being corrected for the 
parents' ignorance or carelessness of their needs. 

Puberty. 

About the twelfth or thirteenth year in a girl's life, and per- 
haps more often the fourteenth year in the boy, the whole system 
undergoes changes that shake it to its foundation. All of these 
center around the developing function of reproduction, that of 
child begetting and child bearing. The phenomena that appear 
are the outward signs that nature is equipping the future man and 
woman for the privilege of perpetuating their kind. At this time 
the average girl and boy change markedly in disposition and 
bearing for the time being. It is no time in which to send boy or 
girl away from home to school. Often it is a nervous, trying period 
for both sexes. Frequently the tendency is to be solitary, and 
unless comradeship is free between mother and father and the 
children, this is the time when serious mistakes can be made, both 
of omission and commission. Physical as well as nervous changes 

So 




Aristolochia, or Dutchman's pipe, showing the hairy passageway to the 

honey, the insects within, the pistil and stamens; also the 

sectioned ovarv and seeds. Reproduction of a 

German wall chart. 



What Must be Taught f 

are noticeable in both the girl and boy. In the former the breasts 
enlarge, the pelvis becomes more roomy, the gland (thyroid) on the 
front of the neck often enlarges, the voice deepens, and the downy 
hair in the axillae (armpits) and over the pubes increases to a full 
and dense growth. Suddenly the menstrual flow appears, often 
to disappear and reappear without marked regularity for a time, 
until finally it settles down into the rhythm set for it by the laws 
of nature and health (vid pp. 98 ). The girl who has been a lanky 
tomboy now gradually softens, and mellows with proper direction 
into a more womanly grace. At this time also is afforded the oppor- 
tunity for the misdirected girl to develop into one given over to 
indulgence and passion, a being full of possibilities for good 
diverted by influences for evil. At a corresponding period develops 
the boy out of childhood into the man. Adolescence for him is 
often a secretive time. Heretofore he has shared with his mother 
and father all his interests, all his sorrows and joys. Now he 
confides naturally in himself alone, and resents the attempts to 
draw him out. Before he played with his sister and with other 
boys and girls regardless of sex, as a true animal. Today and 
for a little time he either shuns them altogether or shows a dispo- 
sition for the feminine sex that is altogether unnatural for him. 
He needs as never before and as he never will again that rare 
balance between a quiet readiness to help on the mother's part, and 
a conscious understanding of the father's sympathy and co-opera- 
tion — both based on the realization that this time of stress must 
and will come and that it can be safely tided over. Here and now 
as at no other time appears the parents' evident reward for early 
confidences, since upon no other tie rest so surely the safety and 
the future of the boy and girl. 

This is also an impressionable, affectionate time, provided tact 
be used in the teaching. The Creator and the personal Father and 
the Elder Brother never seem so real and so needful to the life 
that is struggling ever between birth and death for the mastery of 
the good over evil, as during this first period of conscious struggle 
between the child and the adult forces. 

Not only the mental and the moral being needs direction 
during puberty, but in no degree less the physical side of the boy 
and girl. This is no time for an overload of schooling, or of 
athletics, or of social endeavor. Until Dame Nature has planted 
the new man or woman solidly on his or her new feet there should 
be displayed an uncommon discretion in the adjustment of the 
;day's work and play. The new curriculum is wise in every other 
respect than this. The schoolday provides for every other need 
and care. At just the time in which judicious oversight is needed 
to insure a future healthy physical and moral economy is the 



What Must be Taught? 

tension driven highest, and as a result many a slender cord breaks 
and an otherwise normal boy or girl is wasted. From such soil as 
we are turning out from our schools today cannot be expected 
healthy progeny. The responsibility of the parent therefore in 
these matters extends to one's children's children. A little less 
speed, a lighter burden, a litle more rest of mind and body, a 
relinquishment, until mature years, of the evening coat and high hat, 
of the corset, and the tight shoe, a vast excess of foresight and 
gentle firmness in direction, and comradeship through it all, with full 
explanation of Nature's aims and reasons to both sexes, — these 
measures will bring the boy and girl bark to a fair haven and 
promise in them both the certainty of other lives that will be 
grateful one day not only to the parents, but to the farseeing grand- 
parents^ of the new home. 

Masturbation — Self-Abuse. 

Far less need be said upon this subject than is usually con- 
sidered advisable and necessary. Suffice it to remark that the vast 
majority of boys, and very many, if not most girls, at some time 
during childhood or early adult life indulge in some form of 
masturbation, and relinquish the practice after a short time volun- 
tarily and without suffering permanent harm. Probably no vicious 
habit is more generally learned and indulged in. The harmful 
effects of no habit are more often exaggerated. The boy who can 
look his father and mother fully and laughingly in the eye, who 
can throw his shoulders back and breathe deep, that boy who 
regards his father as his comrade and his mother as his best friend, 
does not masturbate. It is the ignorant, the neglected, the solitary 
boy, of the rich and poor home ahke, who has neither been 
instructed by nor feels at liberty to come to his parents for enlight- 
enment with regard to matters that he does not understand, this 
lonely fellow indulges in self -abuse. It should not be forgotten, 
however, that every square-shouldered, honest- faced boy sooner 
or later enters a silent period which we have already described 
as puberty. Similarly the frank open girl, whose mother has 
instructed her early as to the meaning of all that goes on in her 
early life, the significance of the health of her sex organs, their 
sacredness,^ and their need of safeguarding for future high function 
and privilege, such a girl is in no danger of learning or practicing 
habits that are never indulged in with a clear conscience by either 
girl or boy. 

Just as the cigarette mien is typical, and just as it is easy 
from his manner and general unreliability to indicate among 
very many the cigarette boy, so the boy or girl that is indulg- 
ing to any harmful degree in self -abuse is one whose leanings and 

8« 



What Must be Taught? 

practices soon become apparent to any intelligent individual. Many 
fine true boys and girls are taught self-abuse by others, not infre- 
quently by nursemaids, far more often by school-companions. 
What they need and what they seldom enjoy is prevention rather 
than cure. 

The real cure is indeed prevention by means of a full under- 
standing between parent and child far in advance of the danger. 
Organs and functions that are early recognized by a normal girl or 
boy as needing protection in order that they may be healthy and 
active for a sacred use will not be misused. Far more often is 
self-abuse a symptom rather than the cause of physical or moral 
incapacity or disease. Usually it merely marks a stage in the self- 
instruction and self-development of a neglected child. The habit 
stamps the parents as short-sighted and dilatory in their affection 
and care, rather than the boy or girl as perverted or morally 
debased. It is the writer's conviction that the existence of such a 
practice need never be mentioned to the child. Mothers and 
fathers, and especially estimable single women who have indulged 
in the study of eugenics as a craze and know little or nothing of 
the sex side of life except as a theory, often dwell on masturbation 
as a crying evil, certain to result in physical and moral disaster. 
Better ignore it altogether, and simply teach the right use of 
physical functions that are intended only for high purposes and for 
preservation and use in a more mature period than childhood or 
puberty or even adolescence. Fatherhood and motherhood arc 
already alive in the boy and girl, and both can be appealed to with 
vigor in this direction at a very early age. 

Anatomy and Sex Function. 

It would seem that the present state of society would be more 
healthy and natural had there been a little less secrecy and false 
modesty thrown, from the days of our ancestors to now, around 
the sex functions and anatomy as they bear upon boy and girl life. 
To be sure no one welcomes the idea of introducing children into 
the mysteries of sex knowledge at a too early age. To one who 
studies real boys and real girls as more than a pastime it must be 
apparent that much of the harm and many of the sad errors 
springing up in the relation between the two sexes are the result 
of an unsatisfied, natural, but perverted, curiosity, fully as much 
as of any innate wickedness or carelessness of that which propriety 
requires. Surely the boy should be taught at a very early age the 
reason for and the method of action of all the so-called genito- 
urinary apparatus, and the reason for their safeguarding and care. 
Any good text-book on anatomy will make the teaching easy for the 
father or the family doctor. Even the mother need not shrink 

«3 



What Must be Taught f 

from the task of instructing her boy. When she realizes how 
important it is to be to his future wife and home that he know 
right early, yes, in childhood days, enough to insure his care of 
the urethra, the bladder, of the testicles, of even the bowel lying 
ais it does close against the seminal vesicles, and often through 
constipation the cause of discomfort and harm, — she will not 
hesitate when a male teacher is lacking. In the same manner 
when nature begins to hint at the developing man; when a full sex 
awakening becomes apparent in the form of the normal seminal 
discharge, the boy should not have been left to his own imaginings 
as to what is physically right or wrong, nor ought his mother to 
think him depraved in habit or diseased in body because of her 
Own ignorance as to the means offered by Nature as a physical 
and moral safieguard to the adolescent boy and to the man. 
Sirhilarly with the girl, long before the menses appear there are 
confidences that should have been exchanged between mother and 
daughter or even between an elder sister and the younger that will 
hot only protect her against the improper advances from boys to 
.which nearly every young girl is at some time subjected, but 
against the shock of experiencing unprepared certain of Nature's 
own phenomena. There is a story of wonder and beauty to be 
unfolded to the girl in the seeking out of the female element in 
the plant or flower by the pollen of the male, and in the relation 
of the hundred and one different methods of their union. So, too, 
can be explained the rationale of the uterus, the ovaries, the tubes, 
the vagina, the bladder and rectum, and especially the important 
relative position of the latter to the organs involved in bearing 
healthy children. Let her understand all these things just as she 
does her heart and blood circulation, her stomach and digestion, 
as matters of interest to her own health and that of her child, 
when some day she is a mother. We will have more womanly girls 
ias soon as they begin to know from childhood up that motherhood 
is the chief honor of their lives, and that it is this distinction that 
places them upon a pinnacle above mankind. The girl will not then 
be so likely to choose the unhealthy indoor life and the hampering 
decrees of fashion and mode to the exclusion of common sense and 
of those pursuits and enjoyments that are likely to make her robust 
and capable of producing others of her kind. Physicians will not 
then have to comfort young girls who have not had explained to 
them at home the oncoming of menstruation, nor will women 
regard themselves as an afflicted sex because of the rhythmical 
appearance of that sign of possible motherhood. In that day there 
will no longer appear at the physician's door the prospective bride, 
jtlr unconscious of duties and privileges expected of her before the 
next morning. There must be a more rational arid sane education 




Butterflies hunting nectar in goldenrod. and carrying 
pollen away. [Davenport.l 



What Must he Tmightf 

of the boy and girl in boyhood and girlhood, not at the brink of 
marriage, in the ground facts concerning their own and one 
another's physical bodies, and a sensible protecting knowledge of 
the duties and obligations of the sexes toward each other, even 
in boy and girl time. Let the boy understand clearly the wonderful 
significance of the menstrual function and there will be no further 
passing of slighting comment upon the weaker, rather of apprecia- 
tion of the stronger, more enduring sex. Let the girl understand 
that the average boy develops under the stimulus of a sex passion 
which oftentimes she only in a measure knows, and therefore does 
not need to control, and she will be more careful as to the freedom 
and license allowed to him, not only for her own sake, but for his. 
She will also be a little more thoughtful in her encouragement of 
influences and habits that lead him on to sin and to the harming of 
other girls. 

What a tremendous change in the moral and physical health 
of the nation would be worked by a full sex knowledge on the part 
of every growing girl and boy, no one can now appreciate ! Prob- 
ably for many a year there will be afforded only a contracted 
opportunity for us to try. Come the full opening will, however, and 
with its advent will also begin to develop the morally and physically 
healthy nation ! 

Marriage and the Sex Tie. 

Dangerous as must necessarily be any dogmatic statement 
regarding the object and the regulation of sex intercourse, never- 
theless from every viewpoint the citizen's best good requires its 
discussion, and as far as possible the sanest determination of 
Nature's laws bearing upon the subject. Probably there will never 
be an end to the honest differences of opinion as to whether sex 
congress is an institution founded simply for the perpetuation of 
the species, or whether conjugal affection is by the intention of 
divine Providence so closely bound up with sex instinct and 
passion as to render it impossible of continued existence except it 
be nourished by these seemingly baser impulses. There is so much 
that points to the establishment of sex enjoyment as a rightful 
indulgence between married life partners, and so few are the indica- 
tions that sex interest is an unholy instinct to be altogether 
repressed and subdued, that it behooves every couple to see to it 
that a full understanding is had as to the inexorable laws which 
Nature imposes, while permitting and even encouraging a reason- 
able expenditure of vital tissue and energy with perhaps the sole 
view of cementing the ties of affection and mutual interest. There 
is no other function of the body that can be compared in any of its 
features with sex attraction and sex love. 

«5 



IVhat Must be Taughtf 

There is no other normal indulgence that requires deliberate 
rebuilding of the body in order to recoup for vital expenditure in 
its sane and proper use. Hence it were well for the physician at 
least to give careful advice as to the safe limit of such indulgence, 
leaning rather toward error on the side of urging unnecessary con- 
tinence than toward that grave danger to society and the individual 
which is involved in a laxity in moral and physical restraint and 
self-control. I would make no qualification of my belief that sex 
attraction and sex intercourse are intended to serve as two of the 
strongest ties in married life, altogether apart from and independent 
of the duty of rearing a family, which forms, of course, their first 
and most certain justification. 

Granted, then, that husbands and wives are meant to enjoy 
this sex indulgence, however animal it be, without which few 
homes as a matter of fact remain secure, it seems impossible to 
prescribe definite rules for its regulation either from the standpoint 
of physical health or of mental or moral poise. 

The student of the best interests of the home of the newly- 
wedded pair must begin with the knowledge that in many instances 
the wife is more or less repressed in, if not altogether devoid of 
sex-feeling, while the husband, nearly always, has an over- 
developed sex desire. Neither one of these states is normal. 
Both are unnatural inheritances from centuries of abnormal 
ancestors. Were this a permanent state in every new home there 
would be little prospect of continued happiness in a given mating. 
There is a decidedly animal side to every life union, and if anything 
is certain it is the fact that upon the sex instinct homes are founded 
and maintained, and that in its absence or loss too many homes 
fall to the ground. Providentially, not many women remain cold 
and unresponsive. Many are tactful enough to hide a lack of sex 
interest until some day to their surprise and satisfaction they find 
that it has been only latent, and that it now enters into the comple- 
tion of an otherwise happy mating. An occasional woman never 
learns to welcome the embraces of the man whom she has before 
the world chosen as the father of her children. She is open in 
her rebellion of disgust, and as a consequence is soon astonished 
to find that the love which seemingly had sprung up spontaneously 
and apart from animal passion, really needed the latter as its 
natural soil, and in its absence speedily languishes and dies. There 
is still another class of married people who love violently, and 
then cool as fast and completely, until ardor is gone. When such 
a man and woman become unattractive and even repulsive to one 
another the home is already dead. I think we must admit that in 
the sex instinct and in sex pleasure is to be found more than a 
passing influence upon the integrity of the home. If this be true 

86 



What Must be Taught^ 

the regulation of the sex life should straightway be placed upon 
as sensible and as practical a basis as possible, and as sacred as 
possible should be the affection that prescribes the rules for its 
enjoyment and use. 

Let us start from the ground principle then that the man and 
woman have a right to look on their sex life as a God-given insti- 
tution, and that when exercised within the laws and bounds of 
health and reason this function may be made a valuable influence 
in the home. 

I present this condition of affairs, then, as a simple fact and 
pass on to another phase of interest and difficulty in the sex ques- 
tion. Certain women and an occasional man are peculiar in their 
entire lack of sex instinct or interest, and in their failure to 
experience the sex stimulus that is such an important factor in the 
perpetuation of the race. Were it only the rule for two such 
similar sexless or sex colorless animals to mate and exhaust one 
another's lack of naturalness, the world would be happier by far, 
and perhaps such a pair might even enjoy the absence of enthusiasm 
and interest in one another. Such a state of affairs is conceivable. 
Unfortunately this sort of pairing is never seen in actual life. 
The mathematician, who has by close, analytical work so worn 
out his humanness as to be practically impotent, usually consorts 
with an intense and passionate vixen of an altogether contrasting 
type. The result in terms of the home is a foregone conclusion. 
Or a strong, active, inconsiderate ox of a man marries an aesthetic, 
supercilious orchid of a woman, and in a short time learns that he 
can cause her and his life-circles to interweave in no possible 
manner. He is of the earth earthy, she is spiritual, and as far 
as we have the ability to speculate there will be neither sex passion 
nor earthly comradeship since there is to be no real marriage either 
here or in heaven. Practically speaking then we may look upon the 
usual wedding as meaning some such arrangement as the follow- 
ing: A normally healthy and robust man with every animal 
instinct afire marries a quiet, repressed little maid who is straight- 
way called upon to commit what are, for her, sex excesses in order 
that she may satisfy the demands of her thoughtless and far more 
eager lover. Less often are the conditions reversed. In such 
a case the overdeveloped female is scornful beyond all expression 
of the male who fails to measure up to her individual sex 
tendencies and requirements. 

Enough has been said to make clear to even the superficial 
student of home economics that men and women are perhaps in 
the majority of instances mated through other influences than 
those of sex instinct, and yet are at once expected, perhaps 
unreasonably, to keep love alive in the face of the bitterest of all 



What Must be Taught? 

earthly disappointments, that of irremediable inequality in their 
animal talents and desires. It is their unbalanced apprecia- 
tion of this state of human affairs, in an entire absence of moral 
poise, that leads certain seemingly intelligent individuals to 
clamor for free love and for trial marriages. The old world has 
followed the track laid out in the T-oles of Stone for several 
thousand years, and is not likely to be turned aside very suddenly 
by any such ill-considered propositions. The practical importance 
of a thorough understanding of these matters to the teacher of 
future sex adults is now very apparent, especially to the teacher- 
fathers and mothers. One of the earliest opportunities for the 
employment of such knowledge will present itself when the 
friendships of the growing boy and girl call for regulation and 
steering. If these laws are deliberately ignored in the mating of 
young men and women we will continue having a long list of 
broken homes noticed in our daily newspapers. Deliberately 
should also mean intelligently, so that unselfish living may be 
provided for in advance if an unequal sex mating is once made. 

If universal chastity is ever to be the order of the day among 
men it will only be upon the basis of a new, untried male considera- 
tion and unselfishness, the need for which has not yet been 
appreciated by the ruder sex. The male world must never dare the 
effrontery of casting the blame for its moral depravity upon the 
coldness of its married women. Yet the married feminine public 
will do well to enter upon a self-examination to determine whether 
it has dealt wisely by its men. There are two natural appetites born 
in men and women, the one for food, a necessity, the other for sex 
gratification and indulgence. Both call loudly for satisfaction. 
The one must be supplied if the body is to live, the other must be 
catered to or the affections are prone to die. Human beings are 
more insistent upon privileges than upon rights and necessities. I 
realize well that at this point I am likely to be assailed by the 
sanctimonious prude or by that rare gentleman of the lifeless mar- 
riage bed, whose so-called loyalty and love, cold as ice, survive the 
chill of passionless affection — likely to be assailed, I say, by him 
who wishes to be noted and emphasized as the exception to 
the rule. 

How many, rather how few, there are who receive instruction 
in these matters prior to the wedding ceremony ! How many young 
women enter on their first married night upon a disgust at the 
importunacy of husbands who, they thought, loved them for some- 
thing else than lust, and who, though they do not realize it, really 
did and do love purely, loyally, and well. Yet to the uninstructed 
maids their men appear to have married them for little else than 
to conquer their virgin modesty and give them shame. In many 

88 






1. Mendel's law, illustrated by draughtsmen. (Thomson.) 

2. Complex phase of Mendel's law, illustrated by flowers (mirabilis 

jalapa). (Thomson.) 

3. Ovaries of different flowers and plants sectioned to show the ovules. 

(Kerner.) 



What Must be Taughtf 

instances the wedding night means little else than a horrid memory 
for the bride. How many or how few young men or young women 
are told in advance that the sex over-indulgence of the first weeks 
of married life, whether encouraged by one or both, often results 
in a low mental or nervous type in the child that springs from the 
union. The first child is often the least healthy in body and mind ! 
How many or how few are warned that there had better come no 
child from the earliest married time! But you say, what then! 
Would you ask unreason and impossibilities from an affectionate 
pair? Ah, no, friends, especially young friends! The physician 
would simply commend to your attention the welfare of the child 
who asks you to equip him or her with a better body and mind 
than can spring from the sex excesses of the average newly- 
wedded pair. On you both depends his or her resisting power or 
vitality, as well as his or her temperament and power to control 
dangerous impulses which can be transmitted to children in man- 
ageable or uncontrollable form ! No one can determine for a given 
married couple just what is sex reason or unreason for them! 
The individual is a sex law unto himself or herself! No law but 
one furnishes a safe working guide. 

When the question is asked, "How often can and should sex 
intercourse take place without harm between man and wife?" the 
physician can only reply, "Work out conscientiously your own rule ! 
As long as the body and mind of one or both suffer no lasting 
lassitude or dullness or fatigue, the limit of tolerance is not being, 
or at least has not been, far exceeded.'* 

With some one indulgence a month, with others a fortnightly, 
a weekly, or a daily meeting marks the normal. No rule can be 
prescribed that will properly and wisely suit all. 

It may be of advantage to remember that the vital secretions 
and the nervous energy expended by both the male and by the 
female can be represented fairly by parallel terms in ounces of 
blood. The bodies of both need the fluids that are expended in 
sex pleasure and must do without them under conditions of sex 
indulgence. The nervous energy that is so freely dispensed in a 
brief moment has required hours for its storing away. Physical 
maintenance and repair depend upon these forces from day to day 
On the basis of an intelligent use of these facts more can be 
accomplished by common sense reasoning than by the study of 
pages of dissertation upon the self-control of a Utopian age. 

With regard to conception and child-bearing there should be 
frank, intimate confidence between the husband and wife and the 
family physician if the best interests of all are to be conserved. 
The latter will tell them that the days just before and just after 
the menstrual flow are those in which impregnation is most likely 
to take place. This will have a bearing not only upon the choice 



What Must be Taiightf 

of the wedding day, but also upon the time for sex continence. If 
the doctor is fair and free in his confidence he will state that there 
is no certain preventive of conception other than absolute absten- 
tion from sex congress. Further information will be gained from 
him through queries suggested by the occasion. The doctor is 
truly useful only if employed to prevent and protect. He is not at 
his best when asked to cure. 

One other word remains to be spoken. Oftentimes the physi- 
cian is questioned as to the proneness of men well past middle life 
to become immoral on the sex side, to cultivate sex intimacies with 
women other than their wives. Few days pass free from the 
disastrous public notice of such an occurrence. I think the tendency 
can easily be explained and perhaps with a little foresight prevented. 
Tell the women as they leave young motherhood that the day will 
come in which they themselves enter upon the menopause and lose 
much of the sex desire! In the man, on the contrary, though his 
sex power diminishes, his sex enjoyment and passion appear to 
intensify. At a vital moment the wife, ignorant of this principle, 
often drives her husband away from her embraces into the very 
arms of those from whom she would have him fly as though unclean 1 

Surely we have returned to the point from which we made 
our beginning, one of unselfishness as the essential in a successful 
and beneficial sex life! Regard, above all else, for the fashioning 
of the probable child, consideration for the possible differences in 
sex development of the partner at one's side, a little thoughtfulness 
for another than the man's or woman's self, will rob sex inter- 
course of many of its dangers and its regrets, and restore it to 
its rightful position as one very active means to happiness in 
the home ! 

For the woman sex congress is usually in the beginning a 
more or less painful process. A really difficult entrance by the 
husband should be a signal for prompt discontinuance of effort, 
and for an examination by a physician, who may find some minor 
obstacle such as a resistent hymen (the skin or membrane that 
partially closes the vaginal opening in the virgin), and by an insig- 
nificant operation remove the difficulty. 

Again, for reasons of hygiene, or from preference, or maybe to 
render possible a proper continence, separate beds will be of advan- 
tage. This custom, both here and abroad, is becoming the order of 
the night, mainly with a view to complete rest. In many other 
instances the sense of duty and of mutual interest will furnish all 
the restraint that is necessary, when restraint is required. I well 
remember a young wife who through the first years of married life 
had been over-burdened with child-bearing, and nearly lost her life 
as a consequence. I warned the husband concerning the only man- 

90 



What Must be Taught^ 

ner in which his wife could be saved to him and the home, and from 
that day on for years she was spared all risk of further impregna- 
tion by an absolute, deliberate, continence on the part of her loyal 
mate. While the mother is carrying her child there are also par- 
ticular reasons for continence, oftentimes to the point of complete 
abstention from intercourse. The menstrual period and the nursing 
time are similar opportunities for the husband to show his regard 
for wife and child. Both the mother's usual disinclination and the 
infant's welfare (the quality of the milk) are involved. Too often 
there enter into the home, through the father, in the nine precious 
months of pregnancy, infidelity, disease, and the rupture of con- 
fidence that precedes the death of the home! 

There are problems, it is easily seen, that still await solution! 
Many of them are beyond human fathoming! From the Almighty 
Father came the magic of sex instinct and the power to create 
and to transmit life. Let us leave the unsolved problems with Him 
in the confidence that in His own time He will adjust and straighten 
every difficulty according to His rule. 

Sex Control in Marriage and Out of It. 

The teaching and the science of continence form a very 
different story from that of even a few years ago. Then the female 
was expected to be pure, but the less said about the morals of the 
married and the unmarried male the better. Today and pre- 
eminently within the past five years the teaching has been out- 
spoken to the efifect that no standards are to be laid down for the 
pre- and postnuptial chastity of the woman that are not obligatory 
also upon the man. The male sex has not unanimously subscribed 
to this mandate, but the handwriting has been clearly seen upon 
the wall, and the men, old and young, have had the opportunity of 
reading its message. Moreover the script is of a decidedly fem- 
inine character, and exerts a peculiar force that promises 
execution. The basis of such a radical change of doctrine is, 
of course, the growing recognition of the fact that there is no 
urgent physicial need for sex indulgence. The craving may be ever 
present in the human being, as in certain of the lower animals. This 
does not constitute necessity. There is a growing suspicion that 
the physical, especially the nervous makeups of both the male 
and female, are better fitted for the duties and claims made upon 
them in the entire absence of sex indulgence. We do not pretend 
to understand the function of the internal secretion of the male 
organs. The effect of its complete removal from the body, how- 
ever, is so strikingly apparent and immediate that we cannot doubt 
•Jie importance of its presence in the economy. Just how complete 
Jie utilization of the entire amount manufactured is another matter 

•I 



What Must be Taught? 

for speculation. It seems apparent, at least, that disuse does not 
impair the usefulness of the sex organs, no matter over how long 
a period it has extended. We are quite certain of a few other 
particulars. First, it Vv^ould seem to be an established fact that 
overuse of the sex function in the form of sex excesses tends 
gradually to produce in the male the same unmasculine degeneracy 
that has come to be regarded as typical of the unsexed male, and if 
carried too far, to unfit the individual for any serious physical or 
mental endeavor. In the female the alteration is more or less 
rapidly one of querulous neurasthenia, of mental and physical tire, 
of uterine catarrh (often a well developed inflammation, endomet- 
ritis). Finally, as in the male, there results a lowering of the 
mental and moral state to a point that is best represented by the 
term nymphomania, in which the patient lives only to indulge in 
sex delirium, and is capable of nothing else. Even the moderate 
degree of masturbation that is so common among young girls and 
women tends to render an otherwise frank nature secretive and 
diffident, easily embarrassed, repellant, and uncommunicative. Sex 
excesses of all kinds tell more actively upon the nervous forces of 
the female than upon the male. 

We have thus emphasized the importance of self-control during 
married life to a point of mutual consideration, not only with a 
view to the fullest health and enjoyment of the husband and 
wife, but with reference to the welfare of the prospective child. 
Many use conscience as the sole means of forcing the strong 
power into subjection. Other weaker souls are glad of physical 
aids of which we are fortunate in having not an inconsiderable 
number. Physical exercise short of fatigue is perhaps the best of 
these. Fatigue tends to rid one of mastery over the sex instinct as 
over every other influence that requires firmness of will. Many a 
man or woman has found relief from a sex overstimulus in delib- 
erate vigorous physical exertion. The busy person has not time 
nor opportunity to think of sex matters. I have heard one young 
husband say that more than once he has been compelled to run and 
run until actually ready to drop in order to overcome the temptation 
to illicit sex intercourse during the long months of his wife's preg- 
nancy. By this means he won his fight. 

Clean thinking and the deliberate avoidance of thoughts of the 
opposite sex will also be of signal aid in preventing abnormal sex 
desire. The equally deliberate filling of the mind with healthy 
thoughts concerning some fad cr occupation is as salutary as the 
exercise of the body and, in fact, constitutes a very similar process 

The management of the dietary is also of signal import. Rich 
foods tend to stimulate, bland foods are free from influence over 
sex matters except in so far as a large quantity of any kind of 



What Must be Taught f 

food fills the rectum with a fecal mass and causes pressure upon 
the sex organs, thus keeping them in an irritable state. It should 
be a rule with any one who is endeavoring to cultivate sex sanity 
or complete continence that he or she eat nothing toward the close 
of the day, in order to avoid loading the lower intestinal tract 
before sleep. If possible also in such an individual it will be well 
to acquire the habit of evacuating the bowel during the evening 
instead of during the day, thus avoiding all possibility of undue 
mechanical pressure upon sensitive organs. 

A light amount of covering for the body, and a low tempera- 
ture of the living and sleeping apartment, will also prove influences 
for good. It will be found difficult to stir up sex passion, even 
during sleep, in a frigid atmosphere. This precaution is of especial 
importance at nighttime, when not only the greatest temptation, 
but the conditions most favorable to the stimulation of sex desire, 
obtain. 

In spite of all these simple and, if properly applied, efficacious 
measures there is an occasional individual who needs more con- 
vincing that he or she is in control of the sex instinct, whenever 
he or she will. With the best possible intentions they fight and 
fail, and at last admit that defeat is imminent. In such an 
extremity recourse should be had to the physician who can 
supply through drugs an additional aid to the effort of the will. 
Medicines should be used, however, only as a last resort, and 
while they may supply the needful influence they will never be 
found necessary if the full power of the will is used. Medicines 
jaione are doomed to failure, and cannot be depended upon for 
more than a little help. The individual should be encouraged to 
remember that he or she is only one of thousands who are every day 
fighting successfully the self-same struggle. There are many times 
.in life in which the married pair are intended to be altogether con- 
tinent. The menses form one, many of the months of pregnancy 
constitute another, an illness of husband or wife is a third possible 
occasion. In each and every one of these, if the intelligence and the 
physical and mental stamina are present, they should be used to 
safeguard the tempted one. It may easily be that Nature has pro- 
vided for these breaks in the expenditure of vital energies with a 
foresight that we have not heretofore appreciated. Certainly she 
has laid down no provision that would render necessary any act that 
would endanger the sacredness of the home. 

The earHer the period at which the nature of the sex instinct 
and of the temptations of both the male and female are understood 
by the boy and girl who are to form the future marrying couple, 
the sooner he or she will be satisfied to practice habits of self-control 
with a view to the future. We do not aim at making the children 

■ '93 " • 



What Must be Taught? 

by a pass of the hand into old men and women. In fact, at the pres- 
ent time the older the man and the more senile the woman the less 
sane a knowledge of the sex function do we expect them to have. 
The beginnings of these facts can be digested by children long 
before puberty, however, and as many girls ifnarry shortly after 
this time it will be well for them to have their equipment in due 
season. The saner their instruction at home the fewer doubts 
and waverings will be their portion when they are at the head of 
their own households. The old men and old women of future 
generations will not be more ignorant than the children. 

I am adding to the suggestions offered in this chapter, which 
can at best merely serve as the framework upon which the teacher 
shall hang and construct an original method, a brief list of the 
books that have approved themselves in my experience as helps 
to those who are trying to learn every possible viewpoint from 
which the child can be regarded with relation to the need and 
manner of teaching sex hygiene. This list, used in conjunction 
with another which closes Chapter IX, will, perhaps, not include 
every valuable publication relating to and bearing upon the subject, 
but will at least prove helpful. Many of the books contain state- 
ments and recommend methods which I cannot sweepingly endorse. 
All, however, show an intense love of the child as the future 
man and woman, and urge upon the world the necessity of an 
attempt, at least, to gradually develop a satisfactory regime. Any- 
thing will be better than the former habit of neglect until mental, 
moral, and physical decay have set in. We must not be satisfied 
with "anything," if by striving and comparison and elimination we 
can finally arrive at the very best thing. 

Bibliography. 

Educational Circulars of the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of 

Social Disease. 
Go Tell Other Girls. Four addresses by Philadelphia Women. 
Circulars of the New York Society, and of the Societies of Social Hygiene 

in Maryland, California, Chicago, Portland, and many other localities. 
Proverbs of Solomon. Chapters 7 and 9. 
Instruction of the young in sexual knowledge. Lyttleton, International 

Journal of Ethics, July, 1899. 
Training of the young in laws of sex. Lyttleton. Longmans, Green & Co. 
Four Epochs of Woman's Life. Dr. Anna E, Galbraith. 
A Song of Life. Margaret W. Morley. 
Life and Love. Margaret W. Morley. 

The Bee People. Margaret W. Morley. A. C. McClung Co. 

What young people should know. Prof. (Dr.) Burt G. Wilder. 

Dana, Estes & Co. 
One Mother. Pamphlet by Mrs. Mary G. White. 
The American Boy and the Social Evil. Dr. Robert N. Willson. 

John C. Winston Co. 
If I Were a Girl. Published by Dr. Robert N. Willson. 



What Must be Taught f 

What Our Girls Ought to Know. Dr. Mary J. Studley. Funk & Wagnalls 
Education in Sexual Physiology and Hygiene. Dr. Philip Zenner. 

Robert Clark Co. 
Reproduction and Sexual Hygiene. Dr. Winfield S. Hall. 
Confidences — Talks with a Young Girl. Dr. E. B. Lowry. 
Truths — Talks with a Boy. Dr. E. B. Lowry. Forbes & Co. 

Girl and Woman. Dr. Caroline Latimer. Baltimore 

Teaching Truth. 
Almost a Man. 
Almost a Woman. 
The House Wonderful. 

All By Dr. Mary Wood-Allen. Crist, Scott &• Marshall 
The Intelligence of the Flowers. Maurice Maeterlinck. Dodd, Meade Co. 
Awakening of Spring. Wedekind. 
The Moral Problem in the Child. Mrs. Woodallen Chapman. 

Woodallen Fund Committee 
How Shall I Tell My Child? Mrs. Woodallen Chapman. 

Fleming H. Revell Co. 
How We Are Born. Mrs. N. J. C. W. Daniel, London, England and U. S. A. 
Personal Hygiene. Alfred A. Woodhull, M. D. John Wiley & Sons 

A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil. Jane Addams. MacMillan Co. 

Social Disease and Marriage. Dr. Prince A. Morrow. 

Damaged Goods. Brieux. {Sold by Penna. Society.) Brenlano 

Some Characteristics and Requirements of Childhood. Alice Ravenhill. 

Arnold & Son, Glasgow 
Health, Strength and Happiness. C. W. Saleeby. Mitchell, Kennedy Co. 
Infancy and Infant Rearing. J. B. Hellier. Griffin 

The Development of the Child. N. Oppenheim. McMillan 

Heredity. J. A. Thompson. Murray 

Heredity and Eugenics. Coulter and Davenport. University of Chicago Press 
Heredity in Relation to Eugenics. C. B. Davenport. Henry Holt & Co. 
The Child. Dr. A. Chamberlain. Walter Scott & Co. 

The Child, Its Nature and Nurture. W. E. Drummond. Dent 

An Introduction to Child Study. W. E. Drummond. Ed. Arnold 

Fundamentals of Child Study. E. A. Kirkpatrick. MacMillan 

The Nervous System of the Child. F. Warner. MacMillan 

The Hygiene of Mind. T. S. Clouston. Dutton & Co. 

Labor and Childhood. Miss McMillan. Sonnenschein 

Education by Play and Games. G. Johnson. Ginn & Co. 

Youth: Its Education, Regimen and Hygiene. G. Stanley Hall. Appleton 
Adolescence. 2 volumes. G. Stanley Hall. Appleton 

The School and the Child. J. Dewey. Blackie 

The Boy Problem— A study in Social Pedagogy. Forbush. The Pilgrim Press 
Psychology of Sex. Havelock Ellis. 



^ 



Chapter VL 

What Should the Girl be Taught 

I would venture to offer a suggestion or two with particular 
reference to the instruction of the girl. When they refer to 
concrete things these suggestions, it should be remembered, come 
from a humble man. Only such as refer particularly to girls 
are proposed in any degree of confidence. As a boy, and proud of 
the right to that title until I reach my grave, I know the things 
that boys demand and will more and more insist upon in their 
girls and women. I know, be it also said, those things which 
many men are more than willing to help women and girls attain. 
From this point of vantage, just a word, then, to the parents of 
girls. 

First of all, I would suggest that girls be taught very early 
that they should as women never yield their independence of or 
their once openly acknowledged right to priority and preference 
over men. A quiet insistence upon this point will place within 
woman's power by direct inheritance from mother to daughter 
that most queenly of all graces, voluntary selflessness, the disposi- 
tion and ability and desire to enthrone others. This principle 
may be taught in the palace or in the hovel, over the bowl of 
bread and milk, when the high chairs and trays are side by side 
at the nursery table, later in the private parlor, in the ballroom, 
or in the presence of royalty. Cultivated in both the man and 
woman, the outgrowths of the nursery, this grace will go far toward 
•insuring the health and hygiene of the married life. It will be well 
if the boy hear this teaching of the girl and absorb its essence. 

Second: I would as a reverent student of our wonderful 
body, submit that, whatever the world may say (especially that 
world of so-called new women), the girl's body, soul, and mind 
are fashioned primarily with a view to the reproduction of God's 
image in man. Even the assertive and presumptuous type of 
woman which proposes to acknowledge and appreciate no law of 
parentage or home as of any material interest or import, and even 
seems to forget that a father and mother were necessary to its own 
birth, even this type will hardly venture to deny that woman's 
physical body depends for its perfection of strength and accom- 
plishment upon a due regard for and the scrupulous observance of 

*96 







Results of tight corset-lacing upon (i) the internal organs, and (2) the 
bony birth canal (pelvis). Reproduction of a German wall chart. 



What Should the Girl be Taught? 

laws that relate very closely to the center of the home. There are 
women who pretend to scorn the sanctity and privilege of mother- 
hood. There is no woman, whatever her physical state, who can 
rid herself of the germinant and active consciousness that if she 
had fulfilled her highest opportunity of womanly perfection it 
would have been or would be as a mother. To that noblest of all 
ends, in spite of her, was she fashioned and born. 

The Menstrual Period. 

At no time does the young girl so need an understanding 
comrade in the form of her mother as in the explanation of this 
mystery of mysteries, than which, though so often regarded as a 
burden and affliction, no child of earth has so certain a mark of 
high trust from heaven. If the girl through her pubescence has 
enjoyed the confidence and the free companionship and guidance 
of a fine, womanly mother, she will never forget the blessing con- 
ferred, and will never cease to be grateful for the comparative 
ease of her journey from childhood into puberty as contrasted 
with that dark time of wonderment and doubt experienced by the 
lonely, motherless and sisterless girl of a less fortunate home. 
Why the collective mother should forget her own identical experi- 
ence, permitted only through ignorance and a misguided notion 
of what is helpful and what is harmful for the child, no one has 
ever ventured to explain. It is only matched by the silence of 
fathers concerning sex matters in the august presence of their 
sons. The mother speaks of her own puberty as a nightmare 
period, full of fearsomeness and dread. No one took the trouble 
to explain matters in advance to her. Suddenly one day mother- 
hood became possible in her life, and she, all unknowing, thought 
her hour had come. Finally in fear and shame she confessed the 
workings of Nature within her and was laughed at for her sim- 
plicity and lack of comprehension. Future questions and answers 
between mother and girl accordingly became correspondingly diffi- 
cult to the point of impossibility. Such a child, when at last a 
mother, should shrink, it would seem, from allowing the same 
catastrophe to occur in the life of her own daughter as to permit 
the thought that her mother was not looking ahead for her. She 
must be told well in advance that after a certain age, varying in 
different climates and parts of the world, the ovaries send down 
through the Fallopian tubes every twenty-eight days an ovum or 
tggy similar to the ovum of the plant, and very similar to 
that of the higher animals. While the young girl is developing 
and gaining strength and education for life's battle, month 
after month goes on this ceaseless production of life-possible 
particles, accompanied by the menstrual flow. The fact should 

97 



What Should the Girl be Taught f 

be explained that this is in the nature of a housecleaning 
of the womb (uterus) preparatory to a possible conception. 
Many adult mothers do not understand this fact. Properly 
speaking menstruation continues during the entire twenty-eight 
days, there being a constant interaction of the various uterine 
secretions and nervous influences during all that time. The actual 
flow, however, lasts for only a few days, perhaps averaging in 
this country four or six. Immediately after the visible flow there 
occurs a replacement or reconstructive stage. A little membranous 
nest is formed for the reception of the egg (ovum), which, if it is 
met and impregnated by the spermatozoon (the male element) as in 
married life, goes on to the living growth and development which 
finally end in the birth of a child. During girlhood and womanhood, 
until actual motherhood begins, the ovum is regularly swept away 
during the menstrual flow. Nature flushes the uterus with the mucus 
and blood which pour out from the overful blood vessels and from 
the little glands of the mucous membrane lining of the cavity of 
the uterus. In the period that follows of repair and rest the new 
ovum is forming. Again and again the cycle is experienced by 
the girl and woman until Providence, in her married life, begins 
in her the life of a cfiild. The stage of rest covers approximately 
the two weeks following the cessation of the flow. No rule can 
be set for the character, nor for the duration, nor even for the 
amount of flow comprising the menstruation of different individuals. 
The normal phenomena for the given individual are fixed for 
her only by herself in her best health. Only variations from her 
own normal should give her concern. The amount of blood passed 
averages between five and ten ounces, saturating from five to fifteen 
or more napkins in the day. It is at first light in color and scanty, 
and its appearance is often signalled ahead by distinct nervous 
signs that are well known to the individual. It has been shown 
that in the week preceding the flow the vital energy is increased 
throughout the body in all particulars, as indicated by a rise of 
temperature, an increase in the output of the waste products of the 
body, and a decided elevation of the pulse rate and tension. The 
week following the flow is characterized by a lowering of the 
same vital forces. The fact that a similar variation in the vital 
energies of all animals, including both sexes, occurs at about this 
interval of twenty-eight days indicates that it has to do with other 
forces and functions than those of the uterus alone. This fact 
does not detract from the significance and importance of this 
organ in its relation to the menstrual flow and to the management 
of the menses in the young girl. 

It has already been stated that as a rule the oncoming of the 
menstrual flow is apparent to the individual through the sensa- 

98 











HEREDITY CHART 

OF EMMA W 
BORN FEBRUARY 11. 188» 





Mtnrtt. Otf/rmn 



Cmno 5fCaVfC¥«« SiftA 




m 



f^l^rAc /^cxrf,. fr^^i^t. 






Otncr.rt otrar^rr Crfttr„4 l>rncr,<t OCf 



Cr'ccrt Of 



Illustrating: The vital relation between the human ovum and the 

spermatozoon, and the responsibility of the parent for the type 

of her or his child. (Kollmann, Piersol, and The Survey.) 



What Should the Girl he Taught? 

tions resulting from a congestion ''filling with blood) of all the 
pelvic and abdominal organs. Oftentimes there are headache and 
constipation. Real pain either before or after the flow should 
call for thorough investigation by an intelligent physician, because 
the process of normal menstruation should be free from pain and, 
with few exceptions, can be rendered so as the result of simple 
measures. Probably the best and simplest of all these will be the 
use of a thorough laxative upon the first intimation of the onset 
of the menstrual period. No food should then be taken until the 
intestines have been emptied, and only small quantities of nourish- 
ment for the first twenty-four hours after the flow begins. An 
empty abdomen will go far toward rendering the menstrual period 
one of comfort rather than of distress and dread. 

Warm cleansing baths not only may, but should be used 
throughout the time of the flow, and local sponging several times 
daily is essential to both comfort and cleanliness, even more at this 
time than at any other in the life of the girl and woman. Cold 
bathing will not only prove a harm, but is usually so distasteful to 
the woman at this time that a warning against its employment is 
hardly necessary. 

Dysmenorrhea (difiicult or painful menstruation), amenorrhea 
(absence of the flow), and leucorrhea (a white, purulent discharge) 
all fall within the province of the physician's consulting room, and 
will not be discussed here. Each and all may depend upon trifling 
influences that may be removed at once when recognized. No 
one of these phenomena is normal or necessary, except perhaps a 
slight leucorrhea in some women immediately after the menstrual 
flow. Each should be studied and caused to disappear by remov- 
ing the cause. It is impossible to lay down general rules for all 
individuals even of a given sex. With regard to dietary, rest, 
exercise during the menstrual period, the individual woman will 
require an individual set of laws and privileges. Certainly the 
healthy woman is not intended by nature to be altogether set aside 
from daily duties and enjoyments at this time. It is just as 
certain that violent exercise and free indulgence of the appetites 
are not permissible. Sex indulgence should be entirely foregone. 
Apart from these general principles, however, no rules need be 
laid down. The individual woman will be led by a clear under- 
standing of the circumstances of the case to adjust her own method 
of living to the requirements of this time of congested organs and 
a high-strung nervous economy, rather than by any dogmatic 
instruction by parent or physician. She is seldom willing nor 
should she be made to follow and observe the sex laws that suit 
her aunt, her sister, or even her mother. She is herself, and she 
will need her own individual code. 

99 :.,.,... 



What Should the Girl be Taught? 
The Menopause. 

To be a mother seems to imply a primary and transcendent 
interest in a home. Only that portion of time and interest and 
leisure that remains over and above the needs of husband, child 
and family altar falls to the woman as her peculiar possession. 
She experiences a reminder of her long self-sacrifice as a mother, 
in the after motherhood days. In most women the forty-fifth year 
marks the close of the active sex life and of the child-bearing 
period. The menopause or "change of life" may, however, occur 
much earlier in life than this normal time. In certain women the 
menses appear very early; in such the menopause often comes 
late. It is marked by the gradual cessation of the menses and by 
the appearance of a series of nervous phenomena that correspond 
to the physiological processes of readjustment and of laying aside 
of the most important of all of the vital functions of the woman's 
experience, apart from life itself. Usually the menopause is a 
time of mild, nervous disturbance, not necessarily one of serious 
inconvenience or dread. Oftentimes there is no marked discom- 
fort. The mental tension involved in realizing that the processes 
of advancing years are upon one will even at forty-five be likely 
to prove somewhat of a disquieting factor. Apart from this lack 
of mental ease there are often "flashes of heat," sweatings, and 
pruritus (intense itching). Occasionally bilious attacks appear, or 
diarrhea, or constipation; more rarely there are melancholias, or 
more active disturbances of the mind. Palpitation and shortness of 
breath are very frequently experienced. Vertigo is a not infrequent 
symptom. All of these conditions depend upon the disturbance in 
the nervous economy due to the setting aside of the sex function and 
to the atrophy of the no longer useful sex organs. If we remem- 
ber the richness of the nerve supply to the reproductive organs, 
there will be no failure to understand the wonderful adjustment 
that must be necessary to allow the body to carry on its accustomed 
life under the new order of things. The farewell to activity on 
the part of the uterus and ovaries may well involve the redistribu- 
tion or disappearance entirely of an internal secretion which may 
have a profound influence on the nervous system and general 
nourishment. There is little room for doubt that an internal 
secretion is being manufactured during the young adult years of 
the woman. It is altogether a matter of ignorance with us as to 
what becomes of this secretion at the time of and after the meno- 
pause. Perhaps its failure to longer mingle with the blood is the 
cause of the symptoms that have come to be recognized as more 
or less peculiar to this time. In the normal woman the nervous 
disturbance may be so slight as to be hardly noticeable. Usually 

lOO 



What Should the Girl be Taught? 

it is not a time of danger nor one for concern. All signs gradually 
disappear. 

There are, however, certain phenomena that require the doctor's 
care. First and foremost among these is hemorrhage, which may 
be of grave significance, or may on the other hand be due to some 
easily corrected local condition. The mere knowledge that hemor- 
hage at this period may be the earliest sign of beginning cancer 
which, to be treated successfully must be handled early, will prove 
sufficient incentive to the thoughtful woman to consult her doctor 
promptly and with full confidence, when bleeding occurs. Other 
signs that may be noted require no mention here. The general 
rule may be laid down that any unusual discomfort or distress, 
or any symptoms markedly out of the ordinary for that individual 
should become the subject for confidence between the woman and 
her family physician, if such exists, or the gynecologist if she is 
not so fortunate as to confide in one loyal home adviser. Hygiene, 
physical, mental, and moral is as important in the menopause as 
at puberty. A healthy girlhood and married life will in all likeli- 
hood forfend against the dangers and discomforts of the meno- 
pause. Outdoor living, a careful dietary, proper clothing, above 
all attention to the exercise of the body and to housekeeping of 
the intestinal canal, will go far toward insuring a minimum of the 
disorders by which many women are annoyed. 

Just as the child-bearing period was entered upon in the 
knowledge that it is a natural process from which the healthy 
woman should emerge even more robust and womanly than ever, 
so the m,enopause is a physiologic step. Dame Nature may be 
counted upon to protect her own after their faithful performance 
of motherhood's demands, and to bring them safely to the calm 
stream of a genial middle life, and thence to a restful old age. 

How Far Should the Girl Understand the Sex Side of the Boy? 

It is my firm belief that the girl should be taught all that 
concerns her future health and happiness in the sex makeup of 
the boy. In short, there is so much more common sense displayed 
by the mother and father who tell the girl the simple facts 
regarding the sex life of the boy, and tell the boy the corresponding 
facts regarding the sex life of the girl, that I can hardly conceive 
of employing any other method in my own dealings with either. 
Nearly every vulgar story and joke that is told by boy or girl 
centers around the sacred function of child production and the 
shrine of motherhood. Nearly every lewd tale is based on some 
misconception of the duties and privileges and restrictions of 
motherhood and fatherhood. How much saner the method that 
deals frankly with both boy and girl and renders impossible a 

lot 



What Should the Girl be Taught? 

filthy mind and an unfair tale; because the functions over which 
many young people joke in their ignorance cannot fail to have a 
deep significance if understood from the beginning in their relation 
to future children and a home, not merely to the telling of an 
indecent story in present time. 

All that is included in the succeeding chapter (VII) on the Boy 
would I tell plainly and simply to the girl, just as I would tell the 
boy all that is contained in this chapter for girls. 

Full and mutual knowledge, the one sex of the other, will place 
them far more speedily and far more nearly on an equal footing. 
Thus it is my belief that the boy should have a similar understand- 
ing of the girl. More mutual respect, more courtesy, more chivalry 
of every kind will be born and v/ill multiply the moment the boy 
and girl learn of their future sex interdependence upon one 
another. 

Fresh Air, Exercise, Rest. 

How much exercise and fresh air does the young girl need 
in order to render her as healthy as her brother? Only an equal 
amount, while they are both sexless animals; no more, no less! 
Later on, when motherhood is becoming possible, a little less 
exercise according to the peculiarities of the individual, never 
any less of fresh air than the full amount possible in the twenty- 
four hours! If properly born and bred of good fibre, both the 
boy and girl child can be developed physically in much the same 
way up to the time of puberty. Neither should have more or 
less than enough of health giving outdoor conditions and environ- 
ment. Fresh, clean air all day long is to be the rule from the 
initial birthday until the lifework enforces a little different pro- 
gram. Muscles, bones, arteries and nerves must lay by oxygen for 
the future. None of these tissues will grow healthily and well 
without exercise in the fresh air, then an ample amount of rest in 
the fresh air, a sufficiency, never an overamount, of plain food, then 
exercise and fresh air again to burn up and utilize and assimilate 
that food. Nine-tenths of all the ailments of boy and girlhood 
are primarily digestive in origin. With sufficient exercise outdoors, 
cleanliness within and without, and just enough food, these diges- 
tive disorders will not occur. The chances are a thousand to one 
that few of the so-called children's diseases would occur were the 
children not rendered susceptible to any infection that comes along 
by the irrational lack of direction of the child's life by busy or 
careless parents. 

Granted that they are physically sound any sane game will 
prove beneficial. Any game overdone and played to the point of 
exhaustion will do harm. Contests which tax the endurance to 

102 






Normal ovary and Fallopian tube. (Sappey.) 

Normal pelvis, showing uterus, ovaries, and tubes just in front of 

the rectum, and behind the bladder. (Bourgery and Jacob.) 
Gonococcus abscess of both ovaries and tubes. Rupture of the 
left ovarian abscess, peritonitis, and death. (Author's photograph.) 



What Should the Girl be Taught? 

the limit are good for neither growing girl or boy. I have seen 
more than one youth incapacitated for life by a long distance 
running race into which he was urged by headmaster and school- 
trainer "for the school's sake." Two instances of valvular heart 
disease have come under my care this year as the result of just 
such athletic misdirection. Even more likely is harm to come to 
the girl whose daily physical life is not overseen. One who inherits 
through a long ancestry keen, nervous susceptibilities and tendencies 
will need safeguarding against her ambition. Even one who is 
fat and lazy must not always be driven. There may be a reason 
for the fatness and laziness. I remember one girl of sixteen who, 
on a dare, swam a mountain lake one mile in length. The next 
winter was spent on her back in bed. Nature invites intelligent 
help, but resents an insult in no doubtful terms. Deep breathing 
in the open air is a form of exercise that should enter into all 
other methods of development. Especially in the girl have deep 
respirations an importance in their influence upon the exercise 
and development of the muscular structure of the womb (uterus). 
From ten to fifteen deep inspirations morning and evening would 
change many a pallid, hollow-chested complainer into a rosy robust 
son or daughter, a pleasure to society at large, and a satisfaction 
to themselves in striking contrast with that which they were or 
might have been. ^ 

Rest should mean sleep with an almost empty gastrointestinal 
tract, and with the windows of the sleeping-room opening wide into 
the fresh air, winter and summer. No colds will be experienced if 
the digestion is complete and the air is clean! Colds mean either 
too much or improper food, therefore undigested food, or infected 
foul air, or both, nothing more nor less ! 

Sleep should begin at an early hour and should continue 
until the body has been thoroughly refreshed. There is usually 
little difficulty with regard to the latter end of the sleeping time. 
It is at the beginning that the parent needs to use judgment, and 
oftentimes a little firmness and discipline. By nine o'clock and at 
the latest ten, every boy and girl under sixteen years of age should 
have the head on the pillow. If under these conditions rest does 
not restore the body to energy and strength, the machinery is out 
of order and calls for investigation. As the age increases fewer 
and fewer demands are made upon the tissues for purposes of 
growth and development. Different rules of hygiene may then be 
tried out and adopted as they seem to suit the individual case. 

Cleanliness. 

Geanliness means something different from the weekly tub 
bath that is indulged in from babyhood at the instance of mother 

103 



What Should the Girl be Taught? 

and nurse. It means keeping the head and body as clean as the 
face. This requires more than the monthly shampoo advocated 
by the newspaper advisory column and followed by young women 
and housewives from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The hair and the 
scalp collect dirt more promptly than the face and need an attention 
even more scrupulous. Cleanliness means scrubbing the teeth, and 
the use of floss silk between them, at least twice and better three 
times daily, for sake of looks, dentist bills, a sweet breath, and, still 
more important, with a view to the general health. The number of 
shameful mouths and the sets of artificial teeth, all unnecessary 
provided a little daily care were shown, are a reflection upon the 
obliviousness of the fathers and mothers to the permanent good of 
their children, and a direct retribution upon the latter for their 
exasperating unwillingness to look ahead and to anticipate an 
absolutely certain, mumbling, embarrassed chagrin. 

The nails form another item in the hygiene of the person 
that has its bearing not only upon the personal appearance of the 
individual, but upon many a local infection, the origin of which is 
oftentimes not even suspected. In one of the wards of the Phila- 
delphia General Hospital a nurse died recently as the result of an 
infection acquired through the fingernail scratching of a pimple. 

Cleanliness also means indefatigable attention to the surfaces 
and cavities of the body, especially where perspiration or other 
secretions of the body are likely to decompose and cause the 
victim of the resulting odor to be shunned by friends and foes 
alike. Especially is it necessary for certain individuals to pay 
constant attention to the armpits, to the feet, and to the external 
sex organs, because of the odor that easily forms in these parts, 
though both can easily be prevented with a little intelligent fore- 
sight and care. The Chinese cannot understand the American 
customs of bathing on arising from the night's rest, and of retiring 
with the body coated with dirt and perspiration that must in the 
form of gases poison not only the man himself, but also his wife 
or the child sleeping at his side. Especially in sex relations does 
immaculate cleanliness make for respect and aflfection as well as 
for sex desire. Few men realize how large a number of individuals 
are known best to their circle of acquaintances by their persistent 
carelessness in the matter of personal cleanliness. Hygiene and 
health call for a perfect openness of every pore and every gland in 
the body. This can only be insured by persistent attention to 
its surfaces. The body that has an odor or a smudge evident to 
the by-stander has gone far past the stage of being simply not 
clean. Many a body that exudes no odor is also not clean. The 
bedroom that exhibits an odor in the morning has harbored a 
sleeper some part of whose body is not sanitary. Due to this cause 

104 



What Should the Girl be Taughtf 

and to this only is there an odor characteristic of the servants* 
quarters, which filters oftentimes from the top to the bottom of 
the house. More rarely an odor from the employer's own unven- 
tilated, unhygienic living quarters rises day and night to greet that 
coming down from the fourth and fifth stories. Everyone knows 
one or two such unsanitary people. Let us look to it that there 
are not more, and that we are not of the number. 

The instinctive reflections of a clean body are a clean mind 
and a clean soul. Unsavory characters are, indeed, sometimes 
housed by beautiful, furbished human casements, but the com- 
bination is rare. Almost as certainly as the eye is bright, the 
skin pink and clear, the dress trim, the carriage erect, are the 
inner woman and man sane and comely and sanitary withal. 

No law of physical or moral house- or bodykeeping applies to 
the girl that fails to bind with equal force the boy. No restric- 
tion or requirement should be exacted of her that is not also 
enforced upon him. In this way both will learn that the world 
expects from the two sexes clean, healthy living, and healthy 
progeny that will people and continue to stock the world. 

Dietary; Gastrointestinal Housekeeping. 

Of water the appetite of health probably never calls for a too 
large quantity. The supply should be clean, visibly, chemically, and 
bacteriologically pure. At meals and between mealtimes the habit 
of water drinking is to be encouraged. Only overfilling and over- 
stretching of the stomach is to be deprecated. As a laxative, water 
is one of the most valuable instruments known. Water, as such, 
will almost never cause injury, unless in its ice cold form, which is 
seldom used either in quantities that could be regarded as moderate, 
or at proper times. 

As to other and solid foods, let it be said simply that the vast 
majority of human beings eat far too much for the best interests 
of either themselves or their neighbors. Grown folk require less 
food than growing children for obvious reasons. 

The process of upbuilding nevv' tissue is in the adult no longer 
going on to any great extent, consequently there is not an equal 
need of material for constructive purposes and for repair. Much 
of the hunger exhibited by the girl and boy consists of habit, 
permitted and even encouraged by the parents in the belief that a 
great quantity of food is needed because "the child is growing." 
So-called hunger is, therefore, by no means always a sense of 
food-need. Many of the "growing pains" are evidences of food 
poisoning and lack of food digestion in the intestine. As a rule they 
disappear with catharsis and starvation. The digestive tract can- 
not accomplish impossibilities. If the actual size of the stomach 



What Should the Girl be Taught? 

were to be compared with the actual bulk of some of the meals 
eaten by boys and girls and men and women an object lesson would 
be afforded that would perhaps have its effect. 

Even if only a portion of the meal decomposes (rots) in a 
bowel that keeps all its stores at a temperature of ioo° F. or 
higher, it becomes at once very unlikely that any portion of that 
meal will do good. There are many persons, children included, 
who are thin because they eat too much and are in a constant state 
of food poisoning! They might grow stout if they ate less and 
digested more! A muddy complexion, a pimply skin, a fetid 
breath, a lazy sluggish disposition, a fat ungainly figure, in girl 
or boy, may be due to one or another cause, but are frequently the re- 
sult of an excess of food over the amount required. Let us look, then, 
upon a reduction in food quantity as one of the methods to be tried 
when we desire a gain in weight and in intellectual sprightliness. 
This does not mean that every toxic case is ingesting too large a 
bulk of food. In certain cases the food is of an improper char- 
acter. Nor does it imply that every individual that is free from 
symptoms is taking aboard just the quantity that the ship will hold 
with benefit. I aim at transmitting the fact that a great many 
children as well as adults suffer unnecessarily from what is an 
excess supply of food for their individual digestive economies, 
and yet attribute their symptoms to causes that would call for an 
increase instead of a diminution in the intake. Thus the second 
state is worse than the first. A tractable, obedient digestion is an 
invaluable asset and an indispensable means to good health of 
mind and body. It is also true that a poor digestion is the most 
active of all the factors potent in the discomfort and disease of 
body and mind. Overeating in one individual does not correspond 
necessarily to overeating in another as regards the quantity of 
food. The moral effect is, hov/ever, the same — and is always a 
descent. There is an ever-increasing number of persons for whom 
more than a little food twice or three times a day is too much. As 
the result of one's father's or mother's dietetic sins we are not 
infrequently doomed to prison fare for our own health's sake, 
even though we have always been temperate. We must, therefore, 
remember that one man's temperance may be for another prodigality. 
Irregular meal times, eating between meals, nibbling at sweets. 
ice cream, soda water, what one will, come next to excessive eating 
in their influence for disorder and disarrangement of the digestion, 
and hence of the happiness and health of the home. Students of 
the subject are learning to recognize the great majority of colds, 
many cases of tonsillitis, many eye irritations, nasal catarrhs, a 
certain number of hay fevers and rose colds, many joint involve- 
ments, not a few cases of pneumonia, as the direct outcome, if not 

■ 106 



What Should the Girl be Taught? 

the actual expression of food poisoning, not of contagion as taught 
heretofore. The digestion of childhood is therefore an important 
field for reflection and parental control, not only because of its 
possible influence upon the welfare of the parent, but because in a 
perfect digestion is transmitted to a child the surest means to a 
happy, successful, vigorously moral life. Posterity will depend 
for its direction in matters of happiness and health upon our sane- 
ness with regard to the food spread before our children. 

Dress. 

It would seem as though the trend of habit and fashion 
throughout the world of women and girls is steadily toward sane- 
ness and real freedom and comfort in the matter of dress. We 
are occasionally even now shocked by a new "creation" in the form 
of suit or bonnet, but the actual movement would seem to be for 
health and hygiene rather than for "looks" purely and simply. 
Womankind appears to grow more and more restless under the 
physical restrictions imposed by the dress customs of the day and 
under ailments of the feminine sex, which they are beginning to 
realize, are the result of wearing garments and embellishments 
that impede the circulation, prevent ample exercise, and encourage 
decay. Even the corset lace has heard its deathknell sounded. The 
tight collar and the close-fitting shoe will follow its trail. Only 
of late has the teaching of many generations of doctors that organs 
have been compressed and the blood and lymph circulations 
impeded, and headache and constipation and deformities and diffi- 
cult childbirths have been caused, only recently, I say, has this 
doctrine begun to be appreciated in its full significance, and only 
today is there a likelihood that centuries hence the average woman 
will be physically, as well as mentally, able to compete with the 
average man in the matter of general health. A salutary rule 
would be one that would prohibit all tight and uncomfortable 
clothing, and, for the sake of others as well as for the girl's own 
good, one that excluded the use of any article of dress that 
impinged upon the territory or the safety of one's neighbor, such 
as the flower-garden hat and its evil ally, the hatpin. 

Special attention should be paid to the shoes and the hand 
coverings of the young girl. Both feet and hands should be kept 
warm and dry. Neither should be clad so as to be a conscious, 
evident part of the owner's equipment, either from the standpoint 
of discomfort or appearance. The shoes should be ample in size, 
well-fitted, and the heels should be of a type that will allow 
of the foot resting in its natural position with relation to the ground. 
Many a backache and fretting disposition can be traced to tired 
leg and back muscles due to an improperly constructed shoe. The 

107 



What Should the Girl be Taught? 

circulation, if impeded in the feet, is impeded also in the head and 
bowel and throughout the body. As a result appear headache, 
constipation, hemorrhoids, all perhaps due primarily to the con- 
striction of the feet by tight shoes. The same may be said, of 
course, of the corset, and the collar, and the gloves. The circula- 
tion of the body is a continuous current, and stoppage in one small 
portion causes stoppage, or at least slowing, throughout. The 
importance of attention to these seemingly small matters rests in 
the future and with the health of posterity even more than in the 
present. The appeal is therefore rather to the mother of the girl, 
than to that thoughtless individual herself. A patient explanation 
of the principle underlying unwelcome mandates with respect to 
dress will often sink deeper than is apparent at the start and 
secure at least the reluctant compliance that is better than none. 
The lesson will again bear fruit when that young girl in future 
years has in charge her own daughter or son and is building toward 
a second generation. It is probably a fair statement that the race 
of women as represented by the average woman and girl has 
degenerated into invalidism. This neither impHes the justice of 
the physical fall, nor affords an explanation for her seeming will- 
ingness to further tolerate its underlying cause. The health of a 
nation and even of a sex may be rehabilitated along deliberate 
lines. In the matter of restoring woman's physical integrity there 
should be neither parley nor delay. Neither the girl nor the boy 
will need to be told more than once that a large influence in femi- 
nine invalidism is the ignorance of womankind as to her deliberate 
sacrifice by the male on the altar of his criminal sex indulgence 
and immoral self-complacency. Some day and very early both 
must know the truth, and may God gird them for the struggle to 
right the wrong. 

No justification exists nor ever did exist for the double standard 
of moral and physical health for the two sexes. No right under 
heaven exists whereby the father and brother are permitted to 
expose their own lives to infection and through themselves often- 
times to infect the home. All the while they expect, nay demand, 
that the mother and sister shall be pure. The day has already 
passed in which physicians have encouraged by their silence this 
curse and blight of the American home. 

It would seem well that the girl should right early understand 
that to fulfill the mother's mission her future children must be 
physically and morally a benefaction to the nation. In order to 
insure robust children, the future mother herself must be of as fine 
a type as her mother and she herself can by foresight and training 
provide. Her husband must be chosen in the knowledge that only 
a healthy and clean mate can furnish through her a healthy girl or 

108 



What Should the Girl be Taught? 

boy. There are clean men, and some day all will be clean! A 
clear valuation of this fact is imperative upon the twentieth century 
girl. It behooves her also to know that no physician pre-supposes 
the average young man of today to be probably either physically or 
morally clean. It is well enough to deny the large percentage of 
boy infections with the social diseases as some physicians still 
delight in doing. It is quite another to regard the average boy as 
morally untainted, and even these reluctant professional brethren 
roll their eyes in skepticism when the infected man or boy professes 
to have acquired his disease by accident. 

Thus it devolves as a duty upon the marrying girl and woman 
to weigh the consequences to herself and to the community at 
large before disregarding the protection afforded by available, 
responsible information. 

On the basis of her knowledge that she must fit herself for 
child-bearing, the girl of today should be taught very early that no 
hot-house plant can bear either perfect flower or fruit. Neither 
an athletic hussy nor an unkempt artistic freak is desired when the 
girl chrysalis bursts into its heyday. Outdoor sports and the arts 
will both have contributed to the forming of the well-rounded type 
of woman that America must some day again call her own. The 
nation's birth rate must continue to exceed the death toll, and her 
sons and daughters must carry her standards of moral and physical 
health ever onward to eternity. 

It is high time, moreover, that the young girl should learn that 
no woman ever falls so low as to deserve a further push down- 
ward instead of the full and free forgiveness and even affection 
and intimacy which the Christ gave to the woman of Bethany. 
There is a world of sorrow and wickedness of which many a 
woman need never know ! It is her duty to know that there are 
500,000 public women in this fair land of ours, the main obstacle 
to the reclaim of whom is now and will be for many a rlay the 
refusal of womankind to forgive and protect on the occasion of 
their first fall. Sir Edwin Arnold speaks these words through the 
Indian Sage, as he bends over the ''woman which was a sinner": 

''Child!" soft he said, 'T hail the stately ship 

Safe from all storms, anchored in quietness! 

I hail the fair white hind, flower of these woods, 

Fled from the wolves of sense, which tore her flesh ! 

I hail the gentle river, stayed and vexed 

By crag and ledge, smooth gliding at the last, 

Mid fruitful fields and dropping blooms, to find 

Calm consummation in the accepting sea! 

I hail thy heavenly beauty, purged to prove 

Grace and not plague to men ! O thou that art 

- M9 



What Should the Girl he Taught f 

Thine own high conqueror, and hast set foot 
On the Eight Noble Paths, an old man's lips 
Low at thy hem, praise thee and honor thee! ' 
Yet tell me, Lady ! how the new days came." 

"He would have spoken so; so did He speak. 
So speaking He did heal me," murmured she. 

None but our human Friendly Societies exclude the repentant 
fallen girl and woman. None but the Master Physician went into 
the home of an outcast and showed His affectionate regard for 
her whom He had made whole. Men are watching to see women 
grow not only intelligent, but merciful in handling their own kind. 
Until women become just, as well as wise, the world of men will 
find an excuse to refuse them the primacy which they have allowed 
in an evil moment to slip away! 

A single "don't" for the mother of the growing girl ! 

Do not teach our young g^rls that they must not pass through a 
tomboy period! There is a time, outdoors at least, during which 
the clean boy and girl must live and be treated much alike. They 
enjoy much the same games after the same manner, and are the 
better for the intercommunion. During this period are learned by 
both in Nature's own way principles that will be utilized to advan- 
tage later on when more clearly understood. Forbid the girl to 
ride bareback and to climb a tree, and you rob her of the chance 
to understand, when mistress of her own home, the keen enjoy- 
ment of her athletic mate when the horn calls him to the chase or 
the nation's signal beckons him from her side to a sterner war. 
One noble mother, indeed, smiled through her tears at the thought 
that God gave her seven sons who could lay down their lives for 
their country. For everyone of her type, however, witness a 
hundred who chafe at the thought that their husbands find pleasure 
in other interests than themselves. There are 25,cxK>,ooo widows 
in India today, of whom 200,cxx) are children. Think of the cry 
of anguish and horror and inevitable hatred that would go up if 
suddenly the millions of American wives realized how many of 
their husbands must necessarily be leading double lives in order 
to support the hundreds of thousands of public women that walk 
our streets and frequent our public houses. In a better state are 
the thousands of child-w^idows in that heathen land, with their 
prospect of dedication to the service of the temple, marriage to 
the gods, and lives of impurity, than are the many women who are 
today doomed, some to disease and some to death, as the result of 
marriage to our boys who are to consign many of them to lives 
more regretful than if filled outright with the immoral worship of 
^e Hindoo gods, 

no 



Chapter VII 

What Must the Boy be Taught? 

The cardinal principle born into the boy close upon his love 
and reverence for the Almighty Father should, of course, be his 
inherent loyalty to the mother in every girl. His own mother 
should be the prototype of the girl wife for the future. At no 
age is he too young to begin to look forward to the founding of a 
home. The father's knightly courtesy and regard for that indi- 
vidual mothertype should furnish him with an opportunity to reach 
out and link arms with the growing animal which already is or 
can still be moulded into a manly boy. 

I have for conscience sake ventured the suggestion that this 
mother loyalty should constitute the first teaching and form the 
first natural means of winning the boy. How often the boy fails 
to respond to the note when struck, and how frequently the sense 
of loyalty to womankind fails even to tinge the current of his 
life's stream, I dare not now stop to consider. Perhaps we fail 
to place the fault at the proper threshold and door. Do we often 
enough realize that probably every boy, good, bad and indifferent, 
could and would be moulded into his Maker's image and into a 
reverence such as the Christ paid woman, if the father and mother 
were of the right fibre, standing loyally by and never failing the 
developing boy? Are we getting tired of hearing that there are 
few naturally bad boys, only ignorant, hurried, neglectful, uncom- 
radelike fathers and mothers? Wearisome or not, the statement 
is true ; and on the boy must not be laid the full burden of the 
charge, that, in spite of our oftheard boast, American womanhood 
is cherished neither as our pride nor our object of dearest care! 
The conditions call for serious reflection! Tell a grown man or 
growing boy that his mother, or sister, or wife is anything that 
she should not be, even a common scold, and you rouse a latent 
passion by which you may find yourself furiously overwhelmed. 
Tell that man or boy, however, that his tobacco and alcohol render 
her life less happy, less healthy, the air she breathes less pure, her 
child a weakling by birth, and the home a smokepit and garret 
instead of a joy and refuge, and his resentment loses its woman 
loyalty and becomes a jealous, selfish rage. Tell him that his 
expressions of discontent are unseemly, when he must needs the 

IIT 



What Must the Boy be Taught? 

in the street car to give place to some other man's tired wife or 
mother; that his rudeness and lack of consideration for woman- 
kind are unwarranted in all matters that favor her, even though 
they impinge upon his own physical comfort, and you find him 
no longer an ardent advocate of woman's independence and priority, 
because you are now trespassing upon the sacred territory and 
privileges of the real Number One, the Man. Again, and further: 
Follow his steps under cover of the night and see whither leads his 
supposedly passionate regard for the name and honor of his 
mother and wife and home! Is it for their sakes that he exposes 
himself to moral contamination that would render a woman at once 
unfit to sister or mother him? Is it in order to pay his women 
honor that from his tenderest years to old age he runs the swift 
gauntlet of physical contagions, so unerring that the majority of 
our young boys and men have paid deadly toll from which many 
will never go entirely free? Is it in the sacredness of reverence 
and respect for the American woman that our boys and men, 
young and old. Northerners and Southerners, from the East and 
West, dedicate a definite portion of every fair city to the prostitu- 
tion of the home? Is it in fear of God and inspired by the love of 
true women that American boys and men enter at midnight those 
sorrowful sections of disease and despair, and return with the rosy 
dawn to contaminate, physically, at least, that which they call home? 

Yes, somewhere and somewhen between babyland and the 
world's market, our boys gain and lose a priceless sense of pro- 
prietorship of their mothers and sisters and of the mothertype as 
they recognize it vaguely in every girl friend! Whose the fault, 
what the influence at work, the history of the development of the 
later injustice and open wrong, are not at this moment the points 
at issue. 

What to teach, how to teach, and when to guide the American 
boy back into true nobility and into a fearless sense of final respon- 
sibility to those who, after all is said and done, are the only ones 
whom he at heart holds dear, these are the burning questions of 
the day beside which even child labor, overorganization of capital, 
and the railroad rebate, fade below the horizon. The paradox of 
urging the boy homeward into a virtue which his forefathers have 
neither known nor advocated renders the problem and the task 
none too easy of solution and accomplishment. 

What shall we teach the growing boy? 

First of all, that his life cost his mother something of pain 
and sorrow, and that she who nourished him into being and bore 
him in travail is his earthly friend, subject always to his "aye" or 
"no.** Tell him something of the wonder of the ordeal, and let 
him understand why, while life cost him so little, it meant to her 

112 




The vallisneria, the female blossom on the surface of the stream, the 
male far below. When mature, the male snaps its stem, springs 
upward, salutes and fertilizes the female, and then 
floats away to die. Reproduction of a German 
wall chart. 



What Must the Boy be Taught? 

through long months so much. Have him understand as early as 
possible the beauty of developing life in the flower, in the butterfly, 
the fish, the fowl, in the animal as it approaches nearer and nearer 
man, and last and best, in the boy's father and mother. If he 
actually reverences her he will never lower his honor by degrading 
any woman. 

Teach him the natural selfishness of the male life in contrast 
with the life-long sacrifice of the woman. Show him that there 
is even a male flower (pp. 112) that gives up its life in one pas- 
sionate spring from the stream bed to kiss once and for all time 
the down-turned face of its eager mate waiting on the surface of 
the water. Man and boy simply enjoy, while toils the workaday 
mother! Show him these things out-of-doors in their actuality, 
illustrating with the single cell and the perfected being! Let him 
think himself and dream himself, and finally consecrate himself to 
right ways and a life of knighthood at the side and for the sake 
of his God and of mother-woman ! We may never be -called upon 
to do more. If the father is a full comrade, all he knows will at 
the proper time come into the possession of the boy. Years may 
pass before he can digest the more serious phases of the sex 
problem, especially the horrid figures representing the harvest of 
neglect. But he will have been armed with the foundation principles 
of life and its reproduction in a healthy way by those to whom 
they have meant much as related to him, and have therefore become 
sacred. Recognized as such by the boy and stored away as treas- 
ures of confidence from the two whom, at least, in boy days, he 
loves thoroughly best, they cannot without rude force be displaced 
or replaced by the vulgarity or careless flippancy of school-boy or 
girl, or street companion, or chance acquaintance wherever met. 

Circumcision. 

Sex hygiene calls in perhaps the majority of instances for 
early circumcision of the male. It is fair to say that there is a 
frank difference of opinion among physicians as to the advisability 
of circumcision as a routine measure from the standpoint of mere 
comfort and cleanliness. From that of the boy's future moral 
nature, however, his temptation to and indulgence in sex license, 
and from that of his safety when exposed to infection, there is 
every reason to advise circumcision of every boy during infancy. 
Were there no other, the fact that a circumcised man or boy is 
far less likely to contract infection such as is suffered by a 
great majority of the boys and men of today at some time during 
their young manhood would recommend the measure to parents 
who have the welfare of the future male citizen at heart. There 
is no doubt also that the tendency to sex self-consciousness, which 
is so often the first step to harmful habits during boyhood, is 

"3 



What Must the Boy be Taught? 

far less prominent in the circumcised boy than in one in whom it 
is so easy to be careless in the matter of cleanHness and thus to 
induce local irritations and inflammations that not only may, but 
often do attract the attention of the boy to parts of his anatomy 
that ought to be a matter of little concern during boy years. Let 
me be plain, therefore, in advising every father to see that his 
boy is circumcised before he has reached an age at which the trifling 
procedure amounts to a considerable operation. It can be done 
under cocain and the baby need have no more pain than would be 
experienced from one or two pin pricks. Circumcision lessens the 
sensitiveness of the genitalia and thereby renders easier the control 
of the sex cverinstinct, which in many a young boy results in the 
habit of masturbation or self-abuse, and later in illicit sex inter- 
course. In the face of an occasional strenuous professional differ- 
ence of opinion the author considers circumcision, side by side 
with frequent and careful bathing, as a twin essential to upright 
living in the average boy and man. This does not imply that 
without this measure many a male life is not pure. It simply 
signifies that it is a salient help to boy and man at a time at whicli 
sex control is at its lowest ebb, and every means of safeguarding 
is to be welcomed as an ally to the other conserving influences of 
the home. 

How Far Should the Boy be Instructed in the Sex Characteristics 

of the Girl? 

As completely as possible! The more a boy understands of 
the test to which motherhood is put for his sake, the more certain 
he is to ensure fairness and consideration for women in general, 
even to the point of denying himself in order to give woman 
her due. 

Every word that is contained in Chapter VI should be the 
property of the boy long before adult years, and as soon as he is 
able to appreciate his own significance as a future father. Most 
boys are neither vulgar nor indecent by nature. Nearly all have a 
bright spark of chivalry ready to be set aflame. It means some- 
thing more than a trifling thing to the boy to know the full signifi- 
cance of the monthly period in the girl. Boys of my experience 
have been made more gentle, more courteous, more considerate, 
by the knowledge of all that transpires when a baby is born. No 
boy other than a degenerate jests over a mother's travail once he 
understands all he himself owes his mother! 

Exercise, Diet, Cleanliness, Self-Control. 

Far less need be said to the average boy upon the subjects of 

XI4 



What Must the Boy be Taught f 

exercise and fresh air than to his sister, because not only the 
habits of his playmates, but his own physical tendencies will call 
him into the open. 

Now and again there will appear a hot-house plant of a boy, 
with many of the artificial indoor tendencies that are wrongly 
supposed to belong to the girl. With the parents of such a boy 
will rest just such a problem of nurture and development as falls 
to their lot more frequently with the girls of the home. It must 
be remembered that there is a reason for the boy's indoor disposi- 
tion. It may be inherited directly from either parent, or it may mean 
a lack of health and vigor, or it may mean too much food. Whatever 
it actually does signify, that thing should be discovered, and credit 
or allowance rriust be given the individual when the schedule of 
boytime is being arranged. He must be taught to develop his 
muscles, and also his mind. He must be shown that all cannot be 
done in a day, but that with patience and the proper direction even 
a frail, sickly body may oftentimes be transformed into one of 
comparative vigor and strength, providing the cause of the shortage 
in vitality be found. Such a boy needs a father of inspiring mould, 
one who can and will beckon him on. Under such a parent there 
is no limit to the accomplishment of even the hot-house boy ! 

It ought to be needless to tell the parent or caretaker of the 
boy that cleanliness of mind and body is no more natural with the 
boy than with the girl. Both the clean mind and clean body are 
the products of environment. If the child, male or female, is sur- 
rounded by slovenly, careless people, his or her own habits, as a 
rule, will also be untidy and such as will not bear the inspection 
of a sharp eye or a healthy nose. Both the boy and the girl should 
have the object of cleanliness explained as soon as they begin to 
have laid upon them even a little of the responsibility for the 
housekeeping of the body. They should know for instance that the 
skin actually does part of the breathing, that it helps in throwing 
off waste materials, that it protects the body, and especially the 
blood stream, against too rapid changes in temperature; in short, 
that it is a very useful structure and v^^orthy of protecting care. 
These things, if explained by a father or mother who remembers 
that he or she has not so very long since been a child, can be made 
interesting and very valuable helps to practical results upon the 
daily order of living. The boy would like to know, I think, that 
his lungs contain 60,000,000 or more tiny cells, each of which 
passes its constituents into tiny blood vessels, and through them 
to every part of the body. This means something to him when 
the subject of tobacco is under discussion. I think he would 
also be interested in an outline of the circulation, and in a descrip- 
tion of the manner in which the food reaches the blood and is 

"5 



IVhat Must the Boy he Taught? 

carried to the feet and to the brain at the two ends of his body. 
No doubt even his meals would be more easy to regulate from the 
standpoint of quantity and quality if from the beginning he were 
taken to market and taught the value in expenditure of time and 
effort of that which he puts in his mouth. Each of these lessons 
will require a little thought and time from the parent teacher, but 
each will bear golden fruit, and the boy will some day repay the 
personal attention. 

. One or two more words about cleanliness ! The boy may like 
to know that more than one disease (parasitic) is taken into the 
body through the dirt on the skin, usually that on the, hands and 
feet. He can even be shown the little parasites or their eggs under 
the microscope by the family physician, if the parent uses the latter 
for all he is worth. Every part of the boy's anatomy needs thor- 
ough washing, and some portions of the body several times a day. 
There is often entirely lacking in him up to a certain age that 
vanity which soon or late spurs the girl to a real care of her teeth, 
her hair, her skin, though it cost her some of the moments which 
she might spend in other ways, if left to herself. At the time of 
puberty both boys and girls show a tendency to roughness of 
complexion, to a pimply eruption on the face, chest, and back, that 
can, to a great extent, be avoided, by a little care in the matters 
of food and of more frequent than usual applications of soap and 
water. I well remember a doctor's son whose face was an offense 
because of a repulsive eruption. This boy told me that he did not 
care much, "except that the girls do not like to dance with me!" 
I touched his pride a little by comparing his skin with that of 
several of his friends, and months later saw him with a face as 
smooth as his sister's. In order to accomplish this result there 
was needed a scrubbing with soap and water twice daily, the keep- 
ing of the hands away from the skin, and the removal of the boy's 
complaining appendix by the surgeon- father one day in the woods 
of Canada during a sudden attack that convinced him that a former 
warning had not been overconcern. Once the boy's interest was 
secured, once his intestine was put in order, so that it could digest 
his food, once his pride was stung, the skin cleared up and tlie 
boy's whole future became possible of better and larger things 
than with a pimply face. 

At a certain age the boy, as well as the girl, outgrows the 
untidiness of carelessness and begins to observe the fact that girls 
notice and care how he appears. This usually marks a new phase of 
development for him. It helps him to take the pains to keep clean. 
If girls only knew it, they could use the same method of keeping him 
morally clean. In any event human self -consciousness assists 
somewhat in giving him the desire to appear better even than his 

Ii6 



What Must the Boy be Taught? 

best. The real boy tolerates systematic cleanliness as a necessary 
cross and burden that must be borne. 

At puberty the average boy often begins to become a dude, and 
tends to overdo the matter of personal scrutiny and attention. 
Either stage of the process of development may lead to mischief if 
not sanely directed. During the lax period the sloveliness may be 
reflected in habits of the mind, which cannot be as easily sterilized 
as the skin surface. Of certain forms of vulgarity and filth it 
cannot be cleansed at all. The mark is permanent; therefore, it 
will pay to prevent rather than try to cure. Even the physical body 
will be the gainer in more ways than one for attention paid to the 
teeth, and skin, and hair. In later years than those of young boyhood 
the comfort and health and personal appearance will depend largely 
upon the intelligence and patience with which the boy has persisted, 
where other boys have found these matters "too much trouble." 
The bald head is not a matter of inheritance, the aching mouth is 
not the result, as a rule, of naturally treacherous teeth, the tender 
feet are not necessary, the fetid breath is a sign of poor house- 
keeping within; all these conditions are results of various forms 
of uncleanliness and lack of preventive hygiene and care. 

Just as in the case of the girl the intestinal tract of the boy 
requires a daily evacuation if the rest of the body is to remain 
well. In most boys and men the activity of their lives and their 
erect posture spare the need for special attention to this matter. 
In case of a failure of the bowel to act, however, there will be 
needed definite measures and training wnth regard to systematic 
care of this important passageway and outlet for the waste products 
of the body. Plenty of clean drinking water is essential to a thor- 
ough flushing of the intestinal tube, and there is usually little 
difficulty in persuading the boy to drink freely and often. I have 
for years taken away to camp each summer about thirty boys. Year 
after year, about the third day, one after another becomes feverish 
and develops a headache, refusing the first meal that has failed of 
a welcome since camp week of the year previous. On inquiring I 
find the old story still in force; no bowel movement for two days, 
almost no water ingested, ''because it tasted different from that 
at home," with intestinal stoppage and toxemia (poisoning) as the 
result. A generous dose of castor oil works a miracle in such a 
case, and the mess tent again becomes a popular section of the 
camp. 

Intelligent care of the genitalia, guided by simple suggestions 
by the boy's father or the family doctor, will also mean much to 
the man that develops out of the boy. In many boys the collection 
and decomposition of the secretions within the folds and cover- 
ings of the sex organs furnish a source of irritation and discomfort 

U7 



What Must the Boy be Taught f 

that is unnecessary, and may act indirectly upon other systems of 
the body and tend to disarrange the performance of their proper 
functions. The regulation of the sex functions through cleanliness 
may in this indirect way have much to do with the health of the 
nervous system, of the digestive system, of the heart action itself. 
All external portions of the body except the eye require a daily 
cleansing with soap and water. This is a safe rule for man and 
woman, girl and boy. 

With regard to the boy's mind, cleanliness will depend largely 
upon his companions, and especially upon the intimacy and frank- 
ness that are established between him and his father and mother. 
They can by preventive teaching fill his mind and heart so full of 
sensible knowledge, scientifically simple and accurate, that there 
will be no room for vulgarity and filth. In this way they can steer 
him safely through the school period, then through the still more 
dangerous college days, into the time in which he pledges his life 
to the girl for whose sake, if for no one's else, he would die rather 
than prove untrue. 

I think it would be well in many instances to actually show a 
boy a heart from one of the lower animals, and again to ask the 
family doctor to explain the action of his own heart, and perhaps 
to show a human organ to the boy. It is a piece of machinery 
that requires attention and care that can be applied only by its 
owner. The boy will think for himself occasionally if he knows 
the need without having it driven into him by night and day. 
Tell him how many times the heart contracts (squeezes) in a day, 
how many fewer times when lying down than when the boy is 
standing or sitting! Tell him how far the heart muscle can stretch 
without causing serious trouble, and let him know just the things 
that put it to tests that cannot be safely withstood ! Show him the 
vessels leading from the heart to the different parts of the body, 
and you have equipped him for original research in the matter of 
proper care of his own internal apparatus ! On this basis it is not 
so difficult to persuade him to regulate his exercise, which I have 
already suggested comes more or less naturally to him. He does 
not know by nature that it should be taken in rational doses, with 
a sprinkling of rest between. I have seen young boys, and not 
infrequently adults, tax themselves beyond the physical limit and 
exhibit surprise and chagrin that the body could not withstand the 
strain to which it was not accustomed and for which it was not 
constructed. Only now has left my office the young chap of 17 
years already mentioned, whose hard-earned place upon the cross- 
country team had brought him distinction in the school, but at the 
same time had given him a flabby, weak heart muscle which has 
more than once proved a matter of serious concern. For him cross- 

X18 



What Must the Boy be Taught? 

country running was dangerous, as he had from early childhood a 
defect in one of the valves of his heart. This would have been 
easy to explain to him before he began to train for the race. It 
produced rebellion and disobedience because the teaching came too 
late, and the price that must be paid will be a lifelong exaction. 
This boy's face was swollen after exercise, he was very short of 
breath in ordinary games, twice we have had him in bed in order to 
permit the heart muscle to regain its control, and yet both the mother 
and the school principal withheld the restraining hand because they 
*'hated to deny the boy." Similarly works a new organization for 
boys that has spread the country over. One of the tests for admis- 
sion is to "go a mile in twelve minutes at Scout's pace." Another 
is to "swim fifty yards (this may be omitted where the doctor 
certifies that bathing is dangerous to the boy's health, in which 
case he must run a mile in 8 minutes, or perform some equivalent 
selected by the Scoutmaster)." The Scoutmaster, let it be said, 
must be over eighteen years of age (eighteen being an age of 
wondrous discretion and experience in the safeguarding of boys!), 
and requirements of his choosing are imposed on the boys in his 
troop without the sanction of a physician or his certificate that the 
boy is able to withstand these tests without harm. This organiza- 
tion for boys simply reflects the general carelessness of parents 
the world over, with regard to the physical and moral safety of 
boys and girls at the most important, formative stage of their 
whole career. A game becomes a bad habit the moment it is 
indulged in to the point of physical or moral exhaustion or over- 
strain. Where there is a family physician, use him while the boy 
or girl is well and strong! This is economy in its essence! Let 
him advise with regard to the soundness of heart, lungs, and other 
organs. If the verdict is favorable, then consider turning the 
boy loose, and let him benefit from exposure to ordinary risks, with 
the simple knowledge that I have suggested as a means of equipping 
him to take care of himself. If the physician withholds approval 
of certain forms of exercise, let him tell the boy why and teach 
him, if possible, to overcome the particular weakness to which he 
is subject! Many a weakling becomes a strong man with proper 
direction and care. Many of his scoffing playmates will fall by the 
wayside, while he goes on to success and the founding of a healthy 
home. Baseball, football, horseback, tennis, swimming, rowing, 
even golf, furnish the means of training the normal body to 
robustness and full development. Not one of these games, unless 
it be golf, is a proper exercise for the boy with heart or lung 
disease or any serious physical incapacity. It is for his father and 
the family doctor, and for himself, as boy advisers, to study out 
a schedule of daily living that shall develop his individual organs. 



What Must the Boy be Taught f 

in spite of their incapacity at the start, into their greatest possible 
efficiency. He cannot be guided or developed by any rule of 
thumb. 

Another word with regard to the food question as it touches 
the Hfe of the boy ! It follows hard after exercise in importance in 
his day. Leave it to the boy himself and his meals will precede 
all else in importance and in attention paid. This is not intended 
to constitute a treatise on the feeding of the boy ! Suffice it to say 
that, on the average, the boy is overfed by parents, grandmothers 
and strangers, and then, like the family cat and dog, he is ready 
to visit other sources of supply. All have the idea that "because 
he is growing" he can digest and assimilate more than his stomach 
can actually hold. He needs considerable food at the proper times 
in the day, more, perhaps, than his father and mother. But he 
does not need the quantity that is usually stuffed into his little 
body. The discussion of the subject may be closed, as far as this 
attempt of mine to direct the teacher is concerned, by the state- 
ment that the overfed boy is one who almost certainly indulges 
himself soon or late, not only in tobacco and in alcohol, but even 
more certainly in sex excesses, which he were better and healthier 
and happier without. Relaxation in self-restraint in this matter 
of food intake favors license in every other; whereas, strict self- 
control for a purpose, in this most difficult and tempting of fields, 
implies almost certainly a continent character, and, as a result, 
moral and physical poise and health. I have elsewhere referred to 
the direct influence of the kind and quantity of food within the 
intestine upon the excitability of the sex instinct. This simple 
knowledge will furnish more than one hint as to the proper control 
of the food appetite when the boy is far enough advanced to argue 
with himself on the basis of sex expediency. 

Puberty and Sex Awakening. 

There are few phenomena in the boy's and man's experience 
regarding which there has been so much lay speculation and wrong 
teaching as in the matter of the sex emissions that appear in the life 
of nearly every healthy boy. They begin during puberty (12 to 15 
years) and continue during his life of continence, until in married 
life normal sex intercourse takes their place and substitutes in the 
performance of the same function. Their cause is partly of nerv- 
ous origin and depends at times and in a measure upon a m.echanical 
stimulus. No one can say definitely that there is an excessive or 
overproduction of seminal fluid at any time, or that the seminal vesi- 
cles (the storage sacs) ever overfill. Certain it is that at intervals, 
in one individual quite frequently, in another individual (or under 
different conditions in the same individual), much less often, there 

120 



What Must the Boy be Taught? 

is a sudden discharge of seminal fluid, usually at night and during 
sleep, from nearly every young adolescent male after puberty has 
begun. I say "nearly every" because there does seems to be an 
occasional rare type, usually met with in the pure scientist, the 
mathematician, the confined student, in which the sex function 
seems to be in abeyance. This represents (let me make myself 
clear), by no means the usual in the boy or man. The healthy 
man and boy experience the occasional, so-called "wet dream." 
The emission occurs as a rule in sleep or just at the point of 
awakening from a dream, which not infrequently has concerned 
itself with matters of an erotic nature. The nature of the discharge 
is akin to that of ordinary sex intercourse. Occasionally with the 
daily bowel movement will be expressed a small quantity of prostatic 
fluid, which may or may not be mixed with semen. The true 
seminal fluid, however, is composed of semen, of prostatic fluid, and 
of a secretion from Cowper's glands, and the night emissions are of 
this nature. They are harmful only when they occur with a 
frequency that converts a provision of nature into a waste of 
substances that are necessary to the development and welfare of 
body and mind. Seminal emissions are probably no more neces- 
sary to health than is sex intercourse at any time to the woman 
and man. The precise object of the phenomenon rests in some 
doubt! It appears to me the most rational explanation that an 
allwise Providence, in realizing the constant formation and accumu- 
lation of sex impulses in the growing male, has provided for their 
occasional exhaustion through this simple means at a time (during 
sleep) in which the body and nervous system are at complete rest, 
and therefore in the most favorable state for tissue repair. They 
occur in some individuals as frequently as every three or four days 
or even more frequently without seeming to exert any apparent 
deleterious influence. In others they are weeks and months apart. 
Only when they become insistent in frequency and are appreciably 
depressing in their physical and mental influence should they be 
regarded as other than a precautionary measure on the part of 
Providence. When really acting unfavorably a consultation with 
a sensible physician will at once discover and set aside the cause 
of harm. Constipation, too heavy and warm bed clothing, the 
habit of dwelling upon unclean topics of thought and conversation, 
even an exhausted, nervous, anemic body-state, are the influences 
that conduce to the appearance of nervous symptoms of this 
character. 

The anatomy of the bowel and of the seminal apparatus should 
be explained diagrammatically to every boy at an early period. 
The importance of their close proximity and liability to lie upon 
and crowd one another should be m.ade perfectly clear. The influ- 

121 



What Must the Boy be Taught? 

ence of tea, coffee, alcohol, and tobacco, of spicy foods, and of an 
excess of food upon the sex instinct, should be told simply, yet 
in detail. The liability of stimulating sex passions that may later 
be difficult to hold in check may or may not exert an influence in 
protecting the boy from indulgence in sex harm. Certainly the 
knowledge that any excitation of the sex organs during the day 
will render very likely a similar response to unintended stimuli 




Testicle dissected out, in order to show the seminiferous tubules, also 
the vas deferens and epididymis, (After Piersol.) 

at night and during sleep will interest, and will act as a deterrent 
from misdoing in all save the most confirmed and careless sex 
degenerates. There is an instinctive dread of the night emission, 
partly through inherited misinformation, partly through a natural 
suspicious ignorance, that leads many a boy to the quack and 
charlatan, rather than to the family adviser, who by a word could 
set things straight. It is a safe rule to lay down that the night 
emissions are not exerting a harmful influence so long as they leave 
the body springy, elastic, and ready for the work of the day. A 
loss of vigor and vim, a persistent fatigue, pallor, lassitude, and 
depression, one or all of these, associated with seminal losses, 
suggest a connection, perhaps direct, with a definite relation of cause 
and effect. The matter can usually be corrected, however, by the 
adjustment of trifling influences at work on the body, and the 
worried individual will be restored speedily to the normal. There 
is no one so grateful and no one so responsive to intelligent treat- 
ment as the sexually disturbed boy or man. The physician who 
successfully treats in him some minor disturbance of the sex 
mechanism earns a place in his esteem from which it requires a 
shock to dislodge him. One thing is sure. Both boy and man 
should be instructed by the family doctor to regard the nocturnal 

12a 



What Must the Boy be Taught? 

emission as Nature's sex safeguard until matrimony sets aside the 
restrictions upon sex indulgence by the provision of a life comrade. 
Women should also understand the rationale of this phenomen 
in the male, just as he should be frankly aware of the significance 
of the menstrual flow. They should know that before marriage 
Nature has provided in this manner for his every sex need, and 
that after marriage there is no surer sign of male virtue than the 
reappearance and persistence of the night emission during the time 
in which, owing to one reason or another, sex intercourse between 
husband and wife must temporarily be set aside. 

The day dawns for every boy in which for his safeguarding, 
and that of the girl who will some day give up all for his sake, 
not only the plain facts regarding normal sex hygiene must be 
told him, but also the fact of the existence of the double standard 
of moral and physical health for the two sexes. He must be 
shown that he has a duty to perform in the way of taking a more 




Human spermatozoa. (Piersol.) 

honest stand with regard to this crime toward womankind than 
his fathers have been willing to assume. He must pledge himself 
right early to a different kind of knighthood from that which 
seems to justify to men one kind of honor in the presence of the 
women of their homes, and another straightway they are out of 
sight of their families. The boy will soon glean the knowledge 
from his companions that many in the face of or in the total lack 
of home instruction are violating the principles which he has been 
taught lie at the basis of the life of every gentleman. In early 
boy days he is soon deliberately taught by other boys the abuse 
of the sex function, either in its solitary form, or among boys in 
a group. 

Both the boy and girl should at the proper time hear from 
the parent just why Nature prompts sex passion, and the sacred 
trust involved in the safeguarding of the sex power. In this 

123 



What Must the Boy be Taughtf 

way it will be easy to show that self-abuse is not fair either to 
the boy himself, to his Maker, or to the mother of his future 
children. The seriousness of this phase of temptation should 
never be overdrawn, however, nor the harm of past indulgence 
overemphasized. There is no evil influence that is so frequently 
exaggerated. The boy and girl who are early taught the beauty 
of health as reflected in the gift of a physically perfect child in 
their home will not readily endanger the precious privilege of 
some day perpetuating themselves in the form of tiny children. 
A child thus taught need never be suspected of the need of sur- 
veillance and watching. He leans by nature toward clean things 
and, like the poplars in the legend, his limbs grow straight upward 
to show that they have nothing to conceal. The boy like the 
girl will in due time need to have his eyes opened to the physical 
depreciation everywhere evident as the result of misuse of that 
very function of reproduction which has been represented to him 
as the highest and noblest of all privileges and duties. No parents 
of the twentieth century can afford to leave either boy or girl 
of school-day years in ignorance of facts that are essential to their 
own and their future home's welfare. Both must know soon or 
late, and better soon than late, that many more than half of all our 
American boys, bad or simply careless, and many of them in 
other respects our best boys, that far more than half of all these 
are led by one influence and another to degrade their manhood by 
dishonoring a woman. In one large university the question was 
put to the students with the assurance that the replies would not 
be published in connection with their names, "Have you ever had 
illicit intercourse with a woman ?" The answers showed that over 
one-half of the student body freely admitted the fact. This 
tallies accurately with the hospital records of venereal infections, 
which show about 50 per cent, of all male patients admitting 
experience in venereal disease. The physical punishment is the 
infection of a vast army of boys and young men numbering into 
many millions of those who are no sooner infected than they 
begin, in spite of care, to infect others. They should know that 
the young American mother reaps the first and surest harvest from 
her present or future husband's disregard of home obligations. 
Her health and happiness gone, with her first child goes too often 
on the operating table her privilege of begetting and fostering 
children. Far too frequently marriage brings to her only a tiny 
child, hopelessly diseased, or already dead. Crippled, if it survives, 
a source of infection for others, doomed to early death, marked 
as a rule so as to carry the story of its sorrow on its face, here 
is a picture of a sadness that will cause many a boy and man to 
hesitate on the verge of immorality at least long enough to think, 

134 




1. Section of a normal testicle, with the epididymis and vas deferens 

leading from it. (Piersol.) 

2. Dissection of a testicle, showing the lobules, the specimen being 

injected with mercury. (Piersol.) 

3. To the left, the testicle; to the right, a gonococcus abscess of the 

epididymis. (Author's photograph.) 



What Must the Boy be Taught f 

and perhaps long enough to enable his sense of honor to gauge 
and stem the tide. No appreciation of danger to himself will save 
him for God and nation ! We should, moreover, relinquish speedily 
the time-worn method of punitive instruction, better named 
demoralization. If the boy cares at all it will be for sake of the 
future mother-wife, and because of his hope of a child. For a 
boy knighthood is not unnatural ! The fact that he has not yet 
chosen a mate will not dull his sense of responsibility to that girl 
who is on the road to take her place by his side for all time! 

The Imperative Need of Treatment. 

This is another item of instruction that finds its main 
importance in the relation and duty of one citizen to another, and 
of every citizen to the community. If a boy or man be infected 
with one or other of the two main social diseases it is essential 
from every viewpoint that he obtain the speediest possible cure. 
No matter what the authorities say regarding the possibility of 
cure! This is a phase of the question that finds room for consid- 
eration only before infection has occurred. Grant, for argument's 
sake, that a boy has been unfortunate enough to contract syphilis 
or gonococcus infection, what shall he do ? Delay in his application 
for help in the dilemma and thereby become a virulent center for 
the spread of his disease? Or consult the physician best qualified 
to furnish him the most certain and expeditious opportunity of 
cure? Drug store and quack methods of treatment have been 
applied to about 50 per cent, of all cases, and many have not 
been treated at all. Neglect of treatment has resulted in many 
a serious condition that might have been simple if handled 
properly at the start. The dangers of neglect and delay should 
ever be kept in mind, as well as the likelihood that these influences 
will cause treatment to be of no avail. 

In due time the Commonwealth will recognize these diseases as 
of sufiicient importance to require their reporting by number (not 
by name) from the physician's record. There should be Hnked 
with such a provision a penalty for the refusal on the part of a 
physician or a hospital to treat cases of syphilis and gonococcus 
infection whenever they apply, and by so doing to protect as far 
as possible the public. No longer must the young man allow his 
infectious condition to become chronic and perhaps incurable 
rather than make it known to his family doctor! His family and 
friends and the public are all involved and the case does not 
brook delay ! No longer will he look on these diseases as amenable 
to self -treatment, inasmuch as he knows that in all human prob- 
ability there are thousands of men walking our streets today, 

t25 



What Must the Boy be Taught? 

incapacitated for work as the result of carelessness and neglect, 
and of early unconsciousness of the danger run. Cure thoroughly, 
and very early, each of the many thousands of cases the country 
over and there will be prevented at least an equal number of 
cases for every cured one. These will otherwise be infected, and 
straightway begin again the weary round of infection, new case, 
new infection, ad infinitum. Conversely, one shudders to think how 
many innocent infections of wife, child, friend, fellow-worker, 
are caused by those who would cut oif a right hand rather than 
intentionally harm another who had done no wrong. 

Again! Teach the boy the hopeless darkness of that thing 
called life for an illegitimate child. Tell him how many thousands 
of fatherless and motherless children fill our institutions today! 
Show him that in the final judgment these earthly foundlings will 
certainly seek out and claim with anguished recognition those that 
gave them life, and robbed them of health, happiness, the right to 
a name, and oftentimes even of the right to live. 

What think you ? With such an equipment will a boy enroll 
himself deHberately on the side of honor or shame? Dare you 
deny him the native right of early intelligent choice? Do you 
realize that it is because you have armed him too late that he has 
so often enlisted in the army of crime? Is it of advantage and 
imperative to save by prevention even a percentage of our 
15,000,000 boys for the founding of morally and physically healthy 
and happy homes? Do or do not we fail to realize that in saving 
the boys and young men we will protect the 15,000,000 young 
American girls whom many of these lads are to marry? Or shall 
the infected 7,500,000 and more of our growing citizens, boys 
and young men, as heretofore, be encouraged to contaminate the 
majority of (perhaps all) the 7,500,000 clean and innocent girls, 
who, in turn, will unwittingly blight their children? 

I know the verdict of the man and woman, girl and boy, when 
the present relation between immorality and contagious, hereditary 
disease is realized as well as known! God only grant that the day 
may not be far distant in which the facts and figures shall have 
burned their way home? 



126 



Chapter VIU. 



When are the Boy and Girl to be Taught? 
By Whom and How? 

In the case of boy or girl sane instruction cannot be begun 
too soon. Most of the teaching will be prompted and directed 
by the questions of the child. While one is asking for intellectual 
bread and milk, another will be ready for more solid food. No 
age can be set, nor line drawn. It should simply be remembered 
that there is a very early period of natural, unlimited, unem- 
barrassed child-trust, in which all teaching and all contact between 
parent and child is frank and free. As much of the way should 
be paved during this precious time as possible. In the one child it 
will burst forth as an expression of wonder at some newly discov- 
ered mystery that has perhaps puzzled sages and masters from 
the beginning of time! The first lesson may be called for at 
two or three years of age. It may consist in an affectionate 
restraint of infant hands from parts that are to be looked on as 
sacred, not abused, as is too commonly the rule. It may be well 
for the mother and father to know that the primitive forms of 
worship centered around reverence for the male and female 
generative organs as the originators of life. Even in Bible history 
we find reminders that the phallus and the yoni (the male and 
female genitalia) were divine. We have not done well to reverse 
the regard in which we hold the sex function, and to exhibit only 
its animal, lustful side. Whatever our custom and that of our 
fathers, today there is springing up again the realization that there 
is no privilege so to be treasured, none so well worth conserving, 
as that which we are so recklessly endangering, the ability to 
transmit and to beget life. Once we realize the dignity of this 
talent, we shall again be qualified to teach the world the lesson of 
respect for the sex organs as the symbols and means to new life 
and an infant's new day. 

It will not be difficult for the mother to show by word and 
action that the very discussion of the sex organs is a matter of 
confidence between the child and its most cherished confidante, 
rather than one of delicacy between the teacher and the taught. 
This will at once establish child teaching upon a natural, healthy 
basis. Without such a purchase from which to start, the beginning 

127 



When, by Whom, and How? 

must be falsely and rudely made. Not infrequently some irritation 
of the parts attracts the attention of the child. If neglected, the 
consequent handling may and often does result in a realization of 
pleasurable feeling, even in babyhood, that opens not long after 
into deliberate self -abuse. Many nurse maids stroke the genitalia 
of children in order to keep them quiet. The opportunity for 
definite instruction, as stated, may come, therefore, in the second 
or third year, and happy is the teacher who can thus early break 
the ground. 

Very soon comes the question, "Mother, where did I come 
from?" or, "Where did brother come from?" both openings that 
should be seized with eagerness instead of avoided because of the 
old-fashioned dread. It will not be difficult to explain the little 
about conception and of birth that the tiny child can understand; 
but that little will go far toward making the mother and father dear, 
and will bridge over, as nothing else will, the wide chasm between 
it and the full knowledge which must come a little later on. 

At five, and seven, and ten years of age, we are getting 
perilously near the danger period of awakening sex instinct. By 
this time the child should know many of the details of plant and 
animal reproduction, from what it has seen and from what it 
has heard from the mother's and father's companionship, talks, and 
conversation. Not a few instances come to the physician's 
knowledge of little girls and boys as young as ten indulging in 
ordinary sex intercourse, or in mutual sex abuse. Occurrences 
such as these can only be anticipated and prevented by the 
knowledge that they may occur, and by protecting such children 
by early, afiPectionate, clean knowledge. I cannot conceive of a 
child that has grown in the light of its mother's reverence for all 
that is sacred and beautiful in the birth of a child, and who has 
heard her story told through flowers, and fishes, and birds — I cannot 
picture to myself such a child experimenting or curiously investi- 
gating sex libertinism at the early age of ten. And yet when this 
chapter was begun there were in the venereal wards of the Phila- 
delphia Hospital three little girls, one of ii, one of 14, and one of 
15 years, all infected with contagious disease from sex inter- 
course with a boy or man. All had taken money in return for 
favors given! Not long before I saw a little Italian girl die in 
the medical wards of the same hospital, 15 years of age, and beside 
her, also dying, her baby of a few weeks, both victims of a disease 
(syphilis) which the father had transmitted to them, while not 
even married to the little girl. 

I have recently seen in my office a married woman, divorced 
from her husband at 17 years of age. Married at 15; operated 
upon, and one ovary and tube removed at 16; a second operation 

ia8 





The ameba. i. Showing changes of shape during movement of the 

pseudopodia. (\''erworn.) 2. Showing reproduction by direct 

division. (Schulze.) 



When, by Whom, and Howf 

and the other ovary and tube removed six months later; seen by 
me 15 years later, again infected by a man with the disease that 
had originally unsexed her. These victims were all stolen from 
the cradle, as it were, and yet they are a few of very many 
everyday occurrences. They illustrate simply the imperative need 
of early, ample, intelligent, affectionate instruction. How many, 
or whether any of these sad instances could have been prevented, 
no one knows! Perhaps all! Perhaps none! Certainly the one 
available means should have been employed ! It should be remem- 
bered that the great majority of children leave the schools before 
the twelfth or thirteenth year. At fourteen a vast army of children 
enter wage-earning occupations. At twelve and fourteen sex 
instinct is awakening or already awake. All of the story of the 
origin of life, and much of its purpose, must long since have been 
told. Then will come a period for boy and girl in which the facts 
must undergo silent child-digestion. 

Phillips Brooks' mother wrote, — "There is an age when it is 
not well to follow or question your boy too closely. Up to that 
time you may carefully instruct and direct him; you are his best 
friend ; he is never happy unless the story of the day has been told ; 
you must hear about his friends, his school; all that interests him 
must be your interest. Suddenly these confidences cease ; the affec- 
tionate son becomes reserved and silent, he seeks the intimate friend- 
ship of other lads, he goes out, he is averse to telling where he is 
going or how long he will be gone. He comes in and goes silently 
to his room. All this is a startling change to the mother, but it is 
also her opportunity to practice wisdom by loving, and praying for, 
and absolutely trusting her son. The faithful instruction and careful 
training during his early days the son can never forget; that is 
impossible. Therefore trust not only your Heavenly Father, but 
your son. The period of which I speak appears to me to be the 
one in which the boy dies and the man is born; his individuality 
rises up before him, and he is dazed and almost overwhelmed by 
his first consciousness of himself. I have always believed that it 
was then that the Creator was speaking with my sons, and that 
it was good for their souls to be left alone with Him, knowing 
that when the man has developed from the boy I should have my 
sons again, and there would be a deeper sympathy than ever 
between us." 

For the great part we must all endorse the experience of this 
lover and deep student of boys. In just one particular perhaps 
a man will from his own knowledge of life, and especially of life 
as he has seen it among his own boyhood friends, form a slightly 
different judgment of the reason for the boy's secretive period, 
as well as suggest a more practical method of handling. To 



When, by Whom, and How? 

begin with, it has never appeared to the author that God meant 
our boys to be left entirely to Him. When He puts them in our 
keeping for a little time He evidently intends that we shall "occupy 
till He comes !" Not ^every boy undergoes the silent watch in 
puberty! So many do, hov/ever, and so strictly does it adhere 
in its appearance to the time of puberty, that there seems every 
reason to believe the boy is experiencing new phenomena, and 
meeting new problems which it is neither easy nor best for him 
to study out alone. Granted that all problems are correctly solved, 
the boy is indeed sure to untangle the yarn ! Nature never worked 
after this fashion, however, and as the proper way of spelling 
Nature is God's method and plan, it behooves us to offer the boy 
student and traveler all the assistance we can. It is indeed true 
that the boy is now being transformed into the man, and that he 
has neither the simplicity of the boy left in him, nor as yet the 
wisdom and experience of the man. With new powers he has 
not a new understanding, and just at this moment as never before 
he needs the guidance of his father. Can one imagine a father 
trifling with the opportunity to serve as confidante of his boy? 
And yet not one out of a thousand American boys has had the 
offer of a father's hand at such a time ! Not long since I was 
visited by a lawyer, one of our most brilliant and sane talkers of 
a historically great bar, and his astonishing request of me was 
that I should talk over the questions of sex hygiene, and later of 
social irregularities and their consequences, with his boy and with 
two of his young friends, both fatherless boys! One evening 
shortly after, we five, for the father was present, spent two hours 
over the story of reproduction in lower animal life. The gain 
was mine, because I made three friends that night; and I have 
many times since received a cheery nod from one or other of the 
three boys. But the father lost the privilege that he gave to me, 
and I did not realize at the time of what I was depriving him ! 

And with the girl as with the boy. The changes that take 
place in her life are only more sudden and more radical. She also 
has a wistful, silent time, that carries its wonderings and even its 
fears. The physician meets with women who have up to the time 
of marriage never had explained to them the first signs that Provi- 
dence has been preparing them gently for motherhood! Many 
a one goes into marriage completely ignorant of the obligations 
attendant upon wedded life. Should a girl wait until she is a 
woman to learn that which is dawning for months before? Should 
a girl ever need to ask a mother for information which she should 
have at first hand before there is an intimation of the need? 

No! For daughter and son this is not the moment for con- 
signment to any one, even the Great Father; because He has 

130 



When, by Whom, and Howf 

honored you and me by His confidence, and we must not fail Hini 
at this time! If ever he places a commission in our trust it is 
here and now ! Shall we hand it over to him unoccupied and 
unattempted? "Therefore trust not only your Heavenly Father, 
but your son." Aye, my friends, but lend a hand to the boy and 
girl, for these days may either be full of beautifully clear, and 
rosy promises of the morning's dawn, or of ominous forebodings 
of something sinister and altogether misunderstood, depending 
upon you ! The history of evil as it touches the boy and girl in 
city and country is one of early attack and victory, or of 
discomfiture before puberty is accomplished. There is little doubt 
in the minds of those who have studied both boy and girl that the 
great majority of initial moral lapses and indiscretions have 
resulted from curiosity rather than criminal intent, from unsatis- 
fied craving for knowledge rather than from conscience blunted 
or dead, from fear of ridicule, which a word of affectionate and 
intelligent interest might have forestalled and disarmed. It should 
never be forgotten that the influence and teaching of vicious and 
thoughtless playmates, stablemen, and nursery maids begins 
without waiting upon the signal from the home! Often at five, 
six, and ten years the child has heard and misunderstood vulgarity 
that should have been antedated and its place filled in advance 
with clean knowledge by the father or mother. The girl should 
have the advantage of every item of protecting knowledge that 
is imparted to the boy. There seems no question but that each 
should very early know many of the problems of the other. 

Such a plan of procedure will nourish a less selfish breed of 
boys and a more generous strain of girls, who will live more 
sincerely for one another. The knowledge that has been imparted 
to the growing girl has not been knowledge, rather a harnnfu] 
combination of inaccuracy and distortion, unless of teaching there 
has been an entire lack. The parent must teach generously, along 
the lines suggested by his or her own childhood's void, and witli 
the prayer in the heart that a word in time may save a boy or 
girl for God and the nation. 

With Regard to Group Teaching. 

The question is often asked, '* Shall instruction in sex hygiene 
be given in groups of two or three, or in larger classes, or to 
individuals only? Shall the two sexes be instructed in co-educa- 
tional gatherings or separately ? Shall the various ages be grouped 
together in classes, or should the teaching be graded according 
to age and power of mental digestion?" 

Some of these queries are more easily put than answered! 

131 



When, by Whom, and How? 

In the home and under the mother's direction it is safe to say 
much can be done in the way of group and co-educational instruc- 
tion that will become impossible and unwise in the school. It is an 
established fact that the mother, and even the teacher of little 
children, can with great advantage conduct boys and girls together 
from one outdoor experience to another, every one of which 
carries its lesson in plant and animal sex hygiene and reproduction. 
As long as the simplicity and frankness of the boy and girl are 
unimpaired and natural they can and will digest the same facts 
side by side, and do so none the less reverently because the one is 
male and the other female. There is no false modesty natural 
to this period! If it develops, it is borrowed from prudish elders, 
and at once marks the teacher, whether m.other or stranger, as 
still unprepared to teach. 

Even the mother will prefer to hold her class at attention 
with a minimum of effort, and can do so to better advantage with 
only one or two. Larger groups are permissible even up to large 
audiences, depending entirely upon the personality and magnetism 
of the teacher. As a rule, however, the moment the girl or boy 
leaves the little child period sex hygiene takes on a new guise, and 
subjects must be discussed and handled by both in groups of two 
only, the mother (or the teacher) and the child. I say this in spite 
of the fact that with regard to group teaching I have personally 
found no difficulty or embarrassment in handling small or large 
gatherings of boys and men, even of girls and women. I have 
never seen an individual and have never had reason to suspect one 
of trifling with that which I tried to present as a responsible 
problem for intelligent citizens. I count the youngest one in the 
audience as important as the oldest. I endeavor to make my 
presentation as simple and understandable and interesting to the 
boy as to his rich and portly father whose purse must be depended 
upon to feed the fire that has begun to burn. The boy must keep 
it burning! If I were permitted to choose my group of listeners 
it would be composed entirely of boys or women. Either class 
has shown itself ready to listen with attentive ears, and at the close 
something is certain to be accomplished. I never feel confident 
of more than a surface impression upon men. Too often Number 
One is deeply involved, and prevents over-enthusiasm in a reform 
of the nature of sex hygiene. Perhaps the ideal method would 
be to approach every male individual alone, whether growing boy 
; or man. With the girl, I would certainly have this feeling, though 
I can speak far less positively from personal experience. 

It need not be said, however, that the ideal method is seldom 
practicable. 

In a large school it is next to impossible to reach each of 

132 






Upper — pollen grains, stamens, and pistils. (After Dana.) 

Middle — eggs of the (a), bird; (b), toad; (c), fish; (d), butterfly; 

(e), katydid, and (f). skate. (Jordan and Kellogg.) 

Lower — spermatozoa of various animals: i and 2, snails; 3, bird; 4, 

man; 5, salamander; 6, ascaris. 7, starfish. (Thomson.) 



When, by Whom, and How? 

fifty or a hundred or two hundred one by one. Such a gathering 
of boys and girls calls necessarily for group instruction. It can 
be addressed as advantageously in mass meeting as in little bodies 
by the right teacher! What is needed, no matter who the indi- 
vidual, is to bring him or her face to face with the fact that he or 
she is an integral portion of society, and that one cannot be morally 
or physically unhealthy or unclean without influencing the com- 
munity at large. The pupil should know that you believe one's 
power of influence is a high trust that cannot morally be disre- 
garded. Once this attitude is assumed on the part of a single 
listener or by an audience of a thousand the instructor has before 
and under him a loyal constituency that will follow whole- 
heartedly wherever he or she may lead. 

This, then, is the answer to the group question. The wisdom 
and the practicability of the group method depend altogether 
upon the teacher. If his magnetism be of the right sort he can 
direct any and every size of group from one to a community! 
Better a man for boys and a woman for girls after childhood's age! 
There lies in the born teacher, irrespective of sex, a seriousness 
and ambition to teach only helpful things that cannot fail to 
impress and pave the way for the simplest and most pregnant 
message. 

By Whom Shall the Boy and Girl be Taught? 

This question follows at once upon and is wrapped up in the 
important query, "When shall the lesson be taught?" Only the 
skillful and proved instructor will avoid harm! In no other field 
is teacher training so essential and so difiicult to obtain! The first 
attempts at the formation of schools devoted to this purpose are 
now being tried out. In several cities schools of eugenics are 
covering rather the field of sex hygiene than that designated by 
their name. Today comes word of a school founded expressly 
for the purpose of training teachers in normal sex hygiene^ For 
years the Pennsylvania Society has made such a school one of its 
prominent objectives. 

We may assume at the start that no one is equipped to 
substitute for the mother, trained or untaught, provided she lives 
and loves her child. From her we have learned the principles upon 
which must be built the structure of the science of teaching sex 
hygiene. Her method is the only one that will succeed! Even she 
will need, however, to deliberately equip herself, until a new 
generation of mothers educated from the earliest days shall have 
been reared ! Even without training the real mother is facile 
princeps the best material from which to mould the teachef, 
because to her turn most often and most naturally both the girl 

133 



When, by Whom, and How? 

and the boy in matters of primary child interest. 

"Mother," said one of my little patients to his best comrade, 
"I wish you would tell me where I came from and all about 
myself!" I advised her to take him at his word and tell him all 
he wanted to know. She accordingly told him the story of his 
beginning as only a mother can sing that song of trial and triumph 
and of a dayspring from sorrow and pain into new life. Days 
later he put his arm round her shoulder, and in a burst of confi- 
dence said, ''Mother, I am glad you told me what you did, because 
the boys have been trying to stuff me!" She had won her boy 
just in time, and she had the satisfaction of knowing that through 
her he was safe! 

After the mother the father will find in this opportunity to 
meet his boy in the open his best and perhaps, if declined, his 
last invitation to form a lifelong intimacy. Few fathers get as 
close to their boys as they might and should! It is usually harder 
ploughing for the father than the mother, this business of doing 
one's duty for the future's sake! He has not the unwavering 
moral courage of the woman! But in due time the father can 
also be shown that a change of method may work a lightening of 
the load. Not long ago I heard a man tell a personal experience 
of his boyhood that illustrates this point very clearly. He was a 
mere lad, struggling to town with his possession in a large bundle 
on his back. He was tired out and the bundle had grown so heavy 
that each little obstruction caused him nearly to fall. Just as he 
was about to give up a strong, cheery voice cried out, "Let me fix 
that pack for you, son!" With a few intelligent changes of 
position, and a readjustment of the straps and a redistribution of 
the load, the stranger started the boy on his way, not only with a 
sense that he was not alone in the world, but with the same load 
lighter on his back. 

In the premises the father should constitute a better teacher 
than the boy's mother, who has not herself experienced the boy 
problems, all of which have at one time been known to him. The 
father remembers only too well the unfulfilled needs of his own 
boyhood! Just these needs are the needs of his son, and the task 
of meeting them should not be thrown upon the mother ! The story 
is told that in a certain town in our West the temperance people 
and the liquor people planned to have street parades upon the same 
day, the parades to start from opposite ends of the town. At the 
front of the liquor column there was a man with a banner inscribed, 
'*Men, vote for your liberty!" At the head of the temperance 
column a little lad marched with a banner flaming out the message, 
"Fathers, vote to save your sons!" As the processions drew near 
to one another the man at the head of the liquor army realized 

134 





En 

1. Larvae of the J c\as agricultural ant. ( \\ . M. Wheeler.) 

2. Ant nest. Lower chamber contains cocoons (pupse) ; middle contains 

mature larvae; upper contains young larvae and eggs. (Andre.) 



When, by Whom, and How? 

what he was doing, or rather was not doing, drew down his banner 
of treachery to the home, and with the boy on his shoulders took 
a new position at the head of the temperance parade. The boy 
was his own son, and his banner's message found its way to the 
heart of the father, who, once he saw his opportunity, sprang to 
the defense of his neglected son. 

God keep and shield the girl and boy that have neither mother 
nor father! God also g^ard and guide that girl and boy whose 
parents think them safe from taint and harm. Out-of-doors in 
rain or shine the father has opportunities the mother has not. On 
the other hand, the mother sees the girl and boy in moods and 
circumstances that the father cannot appreciate. The team of two 
has an inexpressible advantage over the single contestant for the 
integrity of the boy and girl life! In the woods, by the river, by 
hill and dale, over the bird's nest, in the farmyard, by the cradle, 
by the mother's knee, — what a series of opportunities presenting 
by day and night to the father and mother team that must pull 
together in order to win. 

No sex teaching was attempted in my boyhood home. Very 
little was done and still less was sanctioned by the public at that 
time ! All I learned of sex science was perverted, unhelpful, rather 
hurtful misinformation, obtained from school-boy and girl play- 
mates and from college companions. Suddenly I began to realize 
the risk I had been allowed to run ! Not until I saw my friends and 
classmates infected with serious disease, of which some of them 
have not yet been rid, did I realize just how serious a thing 
it is to trifle with the sacred powers intended for the per- 
petuation of the race! I might easily have been one of those 
boys! Even now there are those who refuse their children 
the information which our parents had not the knowledge or power 
to give. The boys and the girls and the men who are enabling 
the houses of ill fame to remain open today by their active partici- 
pation (all three being necessary to their continuance), are the very 
boys and girls whose fathers and mothers have been saying, 
"This is all well enough where such teaching is needed. I shall 
see that my children never come in contact with the world's sad 
side until able to protect themselves!" You can readily see such 
a parent, as he or she takes a place beside the sanctimonious prude, 
only a few hours later to witness the wreck of a childbark that 
might have been manned with forces that would have kept its 
head to the storm, and have prevented any save friendly hands 
from laying hold on the ship's side ? Every year thousands of clean 
boys and girls must take the places of those who wither and die, 
the harvest of prostitution! They are not all degenerates, as some 
are fond of saying! Many of them are all too normal in their 

135 



When, by Whom, and HowT 

oversex instinct! If the many who comment on the degeneracy of 
the prostitute class were to be measured by their own sex standards 
they would not escape their own condemnation! No one but the 
father or mother is responsible for the loss of a girl or boy of finer 
possibilities ! The houses of ill fame are recruited every year from 
clean homes in the city and country, and the girls who fill them 
are oftentimes sent by their parents in ansvv^er to advertisements 
of employment that lead them directly into lives of shame! 
Mothers and fathers must learn these things, not merely the fact 
that prostitutes are plying their trade! Someone's girl fills the 
place of the girl prostitute who has just died after a brief life of 
about five years, and someone's boy will be the male prostitute that 
patronizes the girl! Those who tolerate prostitution, the officials 
who permit its legal protection, are responsible for the career and 
death of every one of these boys and girls v*'ho find the opportunity 
for mischief when the temptation comes ! They are responsible 
especially for the ruin or safeguarding of boy or girl in the first 
venture into the heart of the city or town. The steamship landings 
and the railroad stations have emptied and are still emptying into 
a brothel many an innocent girl honestly in search of occupation. 
Every dock and railroad depot should be furnished with expe- 
rienced officials who will recognize the procurer and agents of 
shame, and who will in the name of the authorities guarantee the 
safe disposition of the innocent and ignorant stranger ! 

After the mother and father have accomplished all in their 
power, the public and private schools must assume the task of 
educating the overlooked boy and girl. Many have no and others 
have worse than no fathers and mothers. We have already noted 
the fact that many of the children do not remain in school after 
the fourteenth year. Work for wages then oftentimes seems 
necessary to the support of the home! The teaching must there- 
fore begin, if ever, before the fourteenth year in the case of most 
public school children. In college we reach the boys all too late. 
Certainly in the normal schools there should be aflForded frank, 
scientific instruction with a view to equipping intelligently 
educated public school teachers, through and under whom shall 
grow the fathers and mothers of the future. 

If possible there should be included in the regular courses on 
hygiene, both in the grammar and high schools, lectures and 
talks by men and women physicians on sex hygiene and sex repro- 
duction, as illustrated by biology and nature studies in plant and 
animal life. Among the regular talks upon fresh air, water supply, 
drainage, light, heat, clothing, exercise, posture, rest, drug habits 
Xopium, tea, coffee, tobacco, and alcohol) — might easily be included 
a series upon "sex reproduction and its bearing upon the life and 

_ 136 



When, by Whom, and How? 

the health of the nation." Well do I remember one boy, infected 
with a preventable disease during his freshman year at my own 
university ! As a part of the picture, twice he suffered from 
cerebrospinal meningitis, then from a repulsive catarrh of the nose 
due to necrosis (decay) of the nasal bones and of those forming a 
portion of the base of the skull. I can still hear his reproach in 
the burning question. ''Why didn't you speak to us one year sooner 
about these things ? I might have been spared all this !" 

It required five years of persuasion and struggling against 
prejudice and fear to fortify the authorities of that university 
to disregard certain censure and criticism and to begin to safeguard 
its young men. When it actually began it was the first large 
institution of learning to officially enroll itself on the side of the 
single standard of moral and physical health for the two sexes. 
Today the quondam critics are joining heartily in the general 
movement to save those whom they can still reach in time. There 
should not be a high school or a boarding school or a college in 
the land that does not within the first day or two of school or 
college life gather its incoming class of first year boys or young 
men, or better still its whole student body, for a simple talk by 
some master of the subject, as well as a whole-souled physician, on 
student temptations and student nobilities. The churches should 
not fear to introduce matters of such vital importance into the 
pulpit. Some ministers have already spoken in plain terms regard- 
ing the rocks of carelessness and ignorance on which so many of 
the men who should man the churches go down. More than one 
Sunday school has already armed its boys and girls. In nearly 
every state has formed or is formJng an organization for the 
Study of Social Hygiene and for the Prevention of Social Disease. 
In the last year has been actively at work the American Federa- 
tion for Sex Hygiene, in which are represented the state 
organizations that have been independently engaged in this field. 
It remains now for the Federal, state and municipal governments 
to lend a hand. The social diseases should be recognized by all 
three as contagious conditions, as frankly as are smallpox and 
tuberculosis, neither of which is so dangerous or widespread. 
From many directions comes now the demand that these diseases 
be included in the list of reportable contagions. A number of the 
large cities have actually taken this radical step, reporting the 
patient by number, not by name. Immigrants carrying one or both 
of these diseases should be excluded (when recognized by exam- 
ination) as conscientiously as those giving promise of the spread 
of any other infection. The hospitals should be compelled to 
provide for the treatment of the social diseases as such, and held 
responsible for their failure to the extent of curtailment and with- 
er 



When, by Whom, and How? 

(Irawal of public support and appropriation. Free literature should 
be and is being distributed wide cast, so that every healthy person 
as well as every victim of social disease may be informed of the 
danger and the means of preventing the spread of his infection. 
Brieux, in France, has done much by his plays to awaken the 
French people to a realization of the importance to society of the 
social diseases. 

Prostitution and the prostitute should be regarded as criminal 
mainly because they spread contagious disease! They will on 
such a basis afford little encouragement to the hypocrite and the 
clandestine participant to regard them as inevitable ills. When the 
public knows that every established public woman, and nearly 
every clandestinely immoral girl, carries contagious disease, the 
houses will be closed and the hospitals filled in order to cure and 
prevent new disease and an American mortality which no one 
has the facilities to reckon. Without dealing with the adult popu- 
lation these preventable contagions cost this country many 
thousands of children every year. Respectable owners of property 
used for immoral purposes should be held responsible to the com- 
munity for the deliberate exposure of human beings to contagious 
diseases in the full knowledge that they will not escape infection! 
Only their consciences now hold them responsible for continuing 
prostitution and thus filling the houses of ill fame every year with 
a new army of formerly clean girls ! These are all possible, 
educational measures! 

The people, and above all the women, will at no distant day 
inquire and insist upon a reply from the men as to why the houses 
of ill fame exist, and as to their means of support and supply. 
It is almost incomprehensible that this demand has been delayed 
so long! Hard upon this inquiry will come an investigation with 
regard to the connivance and alliance between the centers of 
immorality and the political association in control of each com- 
munity. The one seemingly cannot and certainly does not under 
present conditions exist independently of the other. 

The women will not be slow in discovering that the most 
pov/erful weapon they can employ in securing for themselves the 
long-withheld franchise is the righting of the wrong of centuries 
inflicted upon them by the men. If any one of them lives in a 
clean city — meaning by the term morally and physically clean — 
or if the moral and physical health of a city becomes the main 
platform upon which the chief executive is nominated and elected 
* — then, I say, the women will not only see that clean men 
are brought forward for nomination, but that only men known 
to be clean are inducted into office. Not a great while after it is 
thoroughly known that thousands of children are born dead every 



Ymseri0t 



ICrOirdtoda 

(ilinlcifiiMl'r. 



fW^«l^rr«f 




Potato bug. Developmert from the egg and larval stages into the adult 
form. Reproduction of a German wall chart. 



When, by Whom, and Howf 

year, many more deprived of sight, thousands of women needlessly 
subjected to operation, oftentimes to death, and thousands ren- 
dered permanently sterile, simply and solely as the result of the 
double standard of moral and physical health, established by and 
criminally enjoyed by one sex, and that sex not the one that most 
keenly suffers — not a great while after it is understood that this 
system is maintained as a cloak for and means of support of a 
rotten political machine, and after these facts are appreciated at 
their proper value, man will surrender shamefacedly, one hopes, 
his last excuse for withholding from woman her right to vote! 
The women will shortly thereafter proceed, with the help of an 
army of new men, to the most radical housecleaning and house- 
keeping that this land has known. 

How Shall the Teaching be Accomplished? 

The answer to this question is necessarily a complex one and 
must be based on plans for the future rather than upon materials 
in hand. In the first place, no rule can be laid down that will be 
acceptable to all or even to many individuals. Especially will 
this be true with the young child! The earlier the years the more 
likely will the needed hint as to the wisest method of instruction 
come from the child itself! As far as possible the subject matter 
should be taught by means of illustrations found in Nature. 
Object lessons in plant life, in insect customs and habits, in the 
family concerns of the fish and birds and the higher animals, will 
supply the opportunities desired for questions and answers that 
will come naturally and call for natural replies. As far as possible 
the child question should have been preceded by just enough of 
this form of object lesson information to help toward a brief 
answer that will not weary or suggest that teaching is being done. 
Certain persons never talk naturally to a child! Once they are 
in the presence of those far younger than themselves they begin 
to instruct whether the listener wishes to be instructed or no. 
Eyesight lessons render this method impossible if anything can, 
and only answers and explanations need be imparted by the spoken 
word. It is unwise, in my opinion, to read instruction in sex matters 
to either child or adult. At first thought this would seem almost 
axiomatic, and yet the majority of parents express their desire for 
something they can read to their boy or girl. With adult and 
child it is a safe rule to prescribe that the more attentive you 
keep your patient with your eye fixed on his or hers the more 
active their confidence, and the more complete their trust that 
you mean what you are saying. Apart from these few suggestions 
the mother's or father's own instinct must direct the enlargement 



When, by Whom, and Howf 

of the suggested plan! I have simply outlined the beginning of 
the teaching. I cannot do more without knowing the child and 
learning at first hand the needs of the individual. It is seldom 
difficult to picture the flower, tgg, or pollen dust to even a tiny 
child. It realizes before you know the short distance one has to 
go from the male element of the frog and the fish to the sperma- 
tozoon of the human being. The nest of the bird and the sac or 
womb in the lower animals have enough of resemblance in function 
to make them useful in suggesting the thought of protecting care 
for the tiny young. When at length the matter of the child's 
own birth is the subject of inquiry the way has already been laid 
for a simple outlining of the manner in which every mother 
obtains her most precious possession. I think it may be regarded 
as an arrangement of Providence that the growing child, while 
still in the womb, rests so near the mother's own heart; also that 
the mother must provide nourishment and protection for two; 
and that the father's life has been all the nine months blending 
and growing with hers. Finally when the little, new pioneer 
receives the signal to awaken and come forth, it finds that the 
world has been expecting it and is ready with warmth and clothing. 
Up to this moment every word, every demonstration has been 
easily understood by the tiny student. The kittens and puppies 
are so like the brown little baby brother or sister in their help- 
lessness that they make infancy and the need of parental care 
very plain. There remains only one, as yet, unexplainable thing — 
the relation of the pollen in the plant to the flower, and the 
relation of the father to the birth of the child. The method of 
transmission of his influence may or may not form the subject 
of another inquiry by the child. It should not now be forgotten 
that nothing is embarrassing to the child, nothing vulgar to her 
or to him. All is wonder and beauty, especially that tie which links 
closer than ever the two who are dearer than all else in the 
world to the wee traveler. Because of this supreme ingenuousness 
of the child it will be easy to pass from the fertilization of the 
plants by the wind, by the insect, and bird, to the fish Vv^ith its more 
callous m.ethod of fertilizing the eggs and then consigning them to 
their destiny. Thence we can go to the bird with its ever increasing 
sense of ownership and affection for its young, next to the farm- 
yard cattle, closer still to the cat and dog, which the child can 
observe for itself, until it is ready to ask questions. All of these 
grades of living things are interesting. They bring us soon or 
late to our humankind. All has been so beautifully and so often 
done by mothers whom I know, and by fathers whom I have heard 
talk with their boys, that no longer does it appear an experiment 
that is being offered for testing and trying out. I have seen boys 

140 



When, by Whom, and How? 

and girls grow up under such a method whose only impression 
was one of regret and surprise when sacred subjects, those often- 
times handled so as to seem vulgar, were misrepresented and 
distorted in song or story. I remember sitting at the table of a 
lovely woman, whose five children discussed with dignity, even 
reverence, at the dinner table, matters of home importance that 
would have been denied discussion in the homes of many a less 
intelligent prude. My first thought on leaving that home was 
''the children that go out from that mother are safe from con- 
tamination and disaster, if any children are immune." And, why, 
may I ask, should not the average home be safeguarded in the 
same manner and to the same complete degree? First of all, I 
reply to my own question, because not every home has a real 
father and a mother! The parents if living may not be of the 
type to render possible such frankness of confidence or any 
teaching that requires intimacy or warmth of affection. "I couldn't 
talk those things over with my mother," said one little girl ! I 
knew without her saying more, that she had felt the lack which 
I perceived at once from her all unconscious words. Or the 
parents may be such as to render any lesson given a bore. I pity 
such and often wonder whether they do not grow tired of 
themselves. 

Again the lives of the parents may be such as to render it 
impossible, rather a hypocrisy, to attempt to teach sex hygiene! 
When home conditions are unfavorable, then the opportunity 
must be sought by the one next nearest in kin, and the battle 
opened for a protecting education of the boy or the girl. I have 
known an interested uncle make a chum of a boy, or an elder 
sister or aunt stand fast by a young girl, and pilot them gently 
over childhood in the absence of father and mother. The elder 
brother can be all in all to the boy, if he be of the right sort, in 
saving him the need of unnecessary exploration and personal 
experience. 

The body's awakening must not then come to the youth of 
either sex with or in the form of a rude shock, or with even a 
pulling of temptation! When a bad and beautiful woman lays 
her wiles to trap a boy, or when a masterful adventurer reaches 
out for a fair girl, they must both have known in advance the 
existence of such beings, and know their sure way of escape! In 
the days of yesteryear each of these happenings would have led 
into a tragedy, moral almost surely, and physical perhaps, if the 
circumstances favored such an outcome! Today and far more 
completely tomorrow, let us hope, will both the boy and the girl 
be equipped to demand from each ship that heaves in sight that 
it show its colors or prepare to answer to a speedy reckoning, 

141 



When, by Whom, and Howf 

meted out by an awakened body politic ! 

I have omitted up to now to suggest the family physician as 
one of the natural bulwarks of the home. It is often said that 
his kind is dying out. Here then is a reason for his renaissance! 
There must in the nature of things be many an appeal from dog- 
matic statements and random statistics to the home physician for 
verification or denial. Never should he usurp the place of the 
father in dealing with the boy ! But in the lack of a father, who 
can better speak from high vantage ground than the doctor, to 
whom is brought every physical and many a mental and heart 
ache. He has not been used enough! He has been allowed to 
almost die out as a species because city specialism and artificiality 
and city distrust have made the old relations of family adviser and 
patient next to impossible! Resuscitate, revive, recreate him by 
estabhshing him in his old place of confidante, at least in this 
vital matter of home health and morals ! The people realize their 
loss of the old time professional friend to whom they could take 
everything in the way of query or trouble! He will be the proper 
one to train the mothers and fathers until every city has its own 
School for Sex Hygiene ! To him should be taken by the father 
every boy before his graduation from school, and long before 
his entrance upon college life. From the lips of him who sees 
the result of trifling with the sex function he should learn the 
dangers that are to be appreciated and avoided on every hand ! 
To the married woman physician will also fall a similar line of 
duty and opportunity for usefulness ! The girls will need as full 
instruction as the boys ! In the public schools, in the institutions, 
in clubs, in the department stores, in factories and mills, in the 
week-day work of the churches and Sunday schools she can find her 
openings! 

The girls must be safeguarded even more certainly than the 
boys, and after the mother the married woman physician is the 
natural instructress of the girls of the home ! 

Everywhere, however, should the male physician be given 
an opportunity to atone for the centuries of silence that have cost 
the people so dear! He alone has known all the facts and he until 
recently has appeared most reluctant to give them their own ! 

We must also think of the thousands of adults who know 
as little as the children with regard to the care of their sex 
natures and sex lives! Is there no means of reaching the army 
of boys and girls now leaving school and soon to be fathers and 
mothers? Will the present generation have to be sacrificed while 
we are waiting to train a corps of teachers? What of the children 
of these who are now leaving the schools at twelve and thirteen 
and fourteen years of age, untaught and unprotected, altogether 

142 



,/il.St'ftfl 



Arthropoda f^-iiifpni^'ifi // 



Ceradtlugler 




Locusts, crkkets, and grasshopper, showing the development from the 
egg. Reproduction of a German wall chart. 



When, by Whom, and Hozvf 

unaware of danger, or of the need of teaching, or the -method 
of instruction? There might be a competent teaching force in the 
public schools today were there teachers to be had ready and 
equipped to teach! But where are they to be found? It is already 
well recognized as a fact that a poorly fitted, careless, slovenly, 
embarrassed teacher is worse than none! There is no denying 
that harmful attempts at teaching sex hygiene have been made ! 
Yet the school opportunity is a very real one, and every experience 
leads to the belief that within a brief period every private and 
public school vvdll provide its teachers and courses in sex hygiene. 
Excellent results are being obtained in many of our cities even at 
this time, and the results can already be seen ! Providence, 
Chicago, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, and New York have all done 
something in this direction. The development of the plan into its 
full possibilities awaits simply the teachers. A host of fathers 
and mothers will some day go out from the public and private 
schools that will rear other fathers and m.others along lines which 
they themselves have experienced only in a measure, and in the 
knowledge and intelligence that should be the inheritance by 
birthright of every child of a free land ! Definite plans must be 
laid for the development of specialists in this form of teaching. 
It will not do to throw the work indiscriminately at and upon the 
public school teacher and command that the child be instructed or 
led! Moreover, knowledge is not all that is required! Personality 
and magnetism on the part of a boy's man or a girl's woman will 
be as essential to success as the proper material for teaching. The 
dyspeptic, hollow-eyed student, with bent back and incapable 
physical frame, offers little promise of striking home with a mes- 
sage for a class of normally vigorous boys. The same class 
addressed by one whom they recognize as a type to admire from 
their own standpoint, by one who has lived the fineness as well 
as the roughness of manly living and has won his fight — the same 
turbulent class will hang on that man's words, even if he tells them 
that girls and women are a special trust placed in their safekeeping, 
and that of all duties it becomes the most urgent that boys and 
men fit themselves to be each the keystone of his home? Where, 
shall I ask you, are the teachers to be found? Have you noticed 
the rapid succession of opportunities to study household economics 
in the colleges throughout the land? Have you observed the 
inclusion in nearly every such a course of sex hygiene as one of the 
newer branches ? We have therefore made a beginning ! Eventually 
there may be established by som.e keen-eyed man with ample 
means a series of such courses or schools. The projection and 
execution of such a plan will render happy some philanthropist 
who is looking for a field for productive expenditure! It would 

143 



When, by Whom, and Howf 

solve the most serious difficulty in the way of material progress. 
It would start the endless chain of sane knowledge that will one 
day be as impossible of extinction as once appeared the vicious 
traditions of the past! 

Give us then an army of equipped workers, even a few, and 
we will open the eyes of the world to possibilities of health and 
clean living of which it has never dreamed! 

Individual instruction will no longer be possible once we have 
left the home, but the nearest practical approximation to it must 
be attained. While at present much of the teaching must be done 
by physicians, in due time there will be found teachers better 
trained in botany, biology, and zoology than the average physician. 
It is toward such a body of naturally fitted and specially educated 
instructors we are aiming today ! 

Probably that course is not the wisest that includes only sex 
hygiene! The sanest series of lectures would appear to be one 
covering the field of personal hygiene, including fresh air, the 
water supply, drainage, light, heat, clothing, exercise, posture, rest, 
etc. 

The earlier lessons should include the story of sex reproduc- 
tion as seen (not told) in the flower, and in other outdoor life. 
The next succeeding year, the instruction might well embrace an 
explanation of the earlier sex phenomena of the girl and boy, of 
the meaning of puberty, of sex instinct, of the menses, of the 
appearance of sex power in the boy, all told in relation to the 
safeguarding of the mother with a view to future parenthood, 
and without reference to or thought of sex indulgence or enjoyment. 

In a third year, and perhaps even toward the latter part of 
the second, should be clearly told the results of misuse of the organs 
of reproduction, as portrayed by the physician's case record books. 
Just when to intermix medical and moral teaching, just when to 
venture to inspire the boy and girl by the example of great men 
and women, just how daring one may be in portraying the manli- 
ness of the perfect Christ, all these things must be left to the 
individual girl- or boy-leader. Every grade of the grammar 
school should include some instruction on the topic which grows 
in importance and interest as the facts become known. There are 
30,000,000 boys and girls of school age in the country. If armed 
for the protection of the home what an army and influence for 
right living! 

The Sunday school presents another opportunity that should 
receive attention! There are in Great Britain and Ireland 738,010 
Sunday-school teachers, guiding the Sunday lives of 7,679,044 
scholars! The International Sunday School Association, including 
the entire membership of the Protestant schools of North America, 

144 



When, by Whom, and How? 

has a membership of 16,000,000, of which nearly one-eighth 
(1,841,385) Hve in the State of Pennsylvania. Let us grant that 
a few years from now no church and no Sunday school will 
consider its work more than half done which deals only with the 
hour and a half or two hours of moral or religious instruction on 
Sunday afternoon. Let us assume that no religious institution will 
be regarded as performing its duty unless it follows the life of its 
members throughout every day of the week. Then let us consider 
the opportunities for reaching with sane information the 16,000,000 
members of the Sunday school, their instruction in sex hygiene, and 
their enlistment in the cause of the most fundamental of all 
Christian institutions, — the home. The writer has long been con- 
nected with a large Sunday school, which has annually placed in 
the hands of its boys and girls plain literature with reference to 
the important facts of sex hygiene. Each year, during the early 
fall, is given an illustrated talk (stereopticon) to the boys of 
the school, on the (i) Boy responsibilities with respect to citizen- 
ship from the standpoint of sex hygiene, (2) On the physical 
consequences of immoral living (the misuse of the normal func- 
tions), and (3) The boy's duty with respect to his moral and 
physical health as a future father. In all directions goes out the 
influence of such teaching, filtering through the young people to 
the older women and men. A similar talk is given to the girls 
of the school, and the matter presented is very similar to that 
given the boys. One of the most striking benefits seems to be 
derived from the realization on the part of both sexes that this 
instruction is as complete and generous for the one as for the other. 
The consciousness that the girls and women of the future are 
wide awake and freely equipped will serve as a new stimulus to 
clean living on the part of the boys, and as the surest protecting 
influence that can be invoked to safeguard the girls and women. 

The Young Men's Christian Association and the Young 
Women's Christian Association, especially through their physical 
directors and through their gymnasiums, have an unusual oppor- 
tunity of reaching effectively a large body of young men and 
women. Through these agencies the teaching must be medically 
and otherwise accurate. There are few such memberships that 
do not contain at least one physician quahfied to address an audi- 
ence on this important topic. That the teaching is being done among 
individuals, as well as in classes, is a well recognized fact. Long 
before other agencies were bestirring themselves the Y. W. C. A. 
was requesting printed matter for distribution. The Mother's 
Congress and the various Women's Clubs and social organizations 
have done and are doing a vast deal for the cause. The Women's 
Christian Temperance Union has been a powerful aid in the dis- 

145 



When, by Whom, and Howf 

semination of vital information. The department stores and fac- 
tories through their social visitors or Social Directors have also 
a great opportunity for the safeguarding of these boys and girls 
through the spread of necessary information. In a number of 
large cities (Philadelphia, Baltimore, etc.), literature has already 
been widely distributed to the male and female employees of the 
department stores and factories. Usually the envelope has been 
addressed in the store or factory and filled and mailed by the 
societies having the work in charge. Only one large store in Phila- 
delphia refused to have the facts placed in the hands of its employ- 
ees. In several, a woman physician connected officially with the 
establishment has given a series of talks on general hygiene, 
including one series upon sex hygiene and the physical dangers 
consequent upon immorality. 

The work should not, however, devolve altogether upon private 
shoulders, nor should it be allowed to roll from those persons to 
whom it should with especial vigor appeal. The municipal author- 
ities, especially the Departments of Public Health, should find it 
incumbent upon them not only to encourage the movement for 
the restitution of the people's rights, but should take an active 
part in the work. There is no Director of such a Department 
but has the power to take steps that would pave the way to rapid 
progress in the contest against the contagious diseases that spring 
from immorality, and against those diseases of the heart and blood 
vessels, and of the nervous system that trace their origin to the 
same source. Of money there should be no lack, once the munici- 
pal governing authorities realize the gravity of the existing state 
of affairs. 

The subject of sex hygiene is one which on emerging from 
its extreme unpopularity of a few years ago has attracted the 
attention of all sorts and conditions of educators. This gives the 
public speaker his opportunity for a deal of good. Those with 
an eye to business advantage have leaped to their opportunity. 
One writer on the subject told me without a blush, "I am not in 
this business (writing and publishing on sex hygiene topics) for 
my health." Because of the recognized difference in qualifications 
and motive (personal and otherwise) of teachers, great care must 
be exercised in the use of printed lectures with either adult or 
boy or girl audiences, to insure the strictest accuracy and adherence 
to scientific fact in the demonstration of such delicate topics as 
the anatomy, the functions, the mechanism, the right use and abuse 
of the reproductive system. Sensationalism is the method of the 
writer who wishes to sell his books. It is also the most certain 
means of delaying and even of undoing the good that is sure to 
come from a sane, ample knowledge of the subject. 

146 




n 



■m-"^ 






1. Honey bee. (a), adult worker; (b), young or larva. 

2. Bumble bees. (a), worker; (b), queen or fertile female. 

3. Development of the monarch butterfly from the egg. (Jordan 

Kellogg.) 



When, by Whom, and How? 

I suggest the following rough scheme as a teaching outline: 

I. World-wide personal responsibility. 
II. Normal sex function, object and use. 

III. Social conditions favoring vicious standards of living. 

IV. The results of unfair methods of living. 
V. What is being done to right the wrong? 

VI. What can be done, that is not being attempted? 

I. I have already outlined the general trend of such a talk 
or lecture in the light of the experience of those who have been 
forced to learn wisdom by their own mistakes. It should begin 
with a description of the need for perfect health in both parents, 
whether flower, fish, bird, or higher animal, provided there is 
expected from the union healthy progeny. In my opinion, it will 
never be found wise or necessary to dwell long upon the anatomy 
of the reproductive apparatus, even in the flower. It is very 
important, however, that it be thoroughly understood that the 
male element in the reproduction of the species is fully as important 
as the female, and that only by their union can life result. An 
early demonstration of this to boy or girl will prove a better 
safeguard against evil communications than a thousand moral dis- 
quisitions on the same subject. Thus I would suggest at least a 
few pictures upon the screen, illustrating the male and female 
elements of the plant of the lower and then the higher forms of 
animal life, pictures of the tgg and of the sperm, at least one 
outlining direct heredity of physical and mental traits and features 
in the animals, and then an illustration by pictures, as restricted 
or elaborate as seems best, of the embryology and reproduction in 
the human being, again with especial reference to transmission 
of good or evil influences, by and through heredity. Once found 
your teaching of the need for physical, mental and moral integrity 
on the basis of the public good, not that of the individual, and 
you have in that moment secured interest and co-operation, per- 
force, if not through natural inclination. A man's neighbors will 
sooner or later compel him to live a hygienic life in so far as his 
life touches that of the community. 

II. From this point to a description of the different functions 
pertaining to sex, as a rule, taught by a man to boys, by a married 
woman, preferably a physician (especially if in public), to the girls, 
is but an easy step. To the trained teacher this phase of the subject 
proves an important means of holding the collective and individual 
interest. I have personally never spoken to a meeting, even of 
young boys, in which I have noted a normal boy in a humor that 
would unfit him for a helpful consideration of the serious ques- 
tions involved in his future duties as the head of a home. Neither 

147 



When, by Whom, and How? 

boys nor girls trifle with that which really interests them. Both, 
when morally and physically healthy, go into things genuinely and 
full of active vigor. They like to carry responsibility and to be 
regarded as worthy of trust. Adults are simply grown children in 
the same respect, and can be attracted and held by the same 
methods. I think the teaching of the proper use and misuse of 
the reproductive power, and the consequences of each to the com- 
munity and the world at large, while always a difficult matter, is 
none the less one of the most vital during childhood, and one that 
may at the proper time be presented as the most serious and most 
fascinating of life's responsibilities to either adult or child. 

III. Conditions as they exist, including the temptations offered 
to boys and girls, men and women; the false teaching of the past 
with regard to a male physical need for a double standard of 
morals; the consignment of a portion of every city to the spread 
of moral and physical disease; the number of men and women 
and the classes from which they come, who keep alive this immoral 
section; the political influences that foster it and live upon and 
from it; the ignorance of the public with regard to its effect upon 
the economic life and welfare and posterity of a given community; 
these are all topics that will interest the growing and the fully 
developed citizen. 

IV. The results of existing immoral conditions in terms of 
physical disease, mortality, sterility, stillbirths, abortions. A com- 
parison of this picture with similar ones drawn from the far less 
serious records of other infectious and contagious conditions will 
form a more technical, but no less absorbing study. This portion 
of the lecture may be forcibly illustrated by an adequate answer 
of the following questions : 

V. What is being done to control the physical and moral 
problem? and 

VI. What can be done that is not being attempted? 

It were far better to form of this an intelligent and complete 
course of six lectures, than to crowd such a vast subject into one. 
Lecture foundations have been established in a number of cities. 
In factory, mill, and department store, in churches, meeting halls, 
and public auditoriums, will be found the battleground. The mes- 
sage is being sent broadcast in some localities, and not at all in 
many others. Much, therefore, can be said in favor of the lecture 
method of instruction. It will not accomplish the entire task. Printed 
literature (educational) should be furnished every physician, and 
every hospital and dispensary, one of the requirements of which 
should be insisted upon and enforced, that every patient afflicted 
with one of the social diseases should carry away with him printed 

148 






L 



1. Tadpole of the frog. (Morgan.) 

2. Toad's development, strings of eggs, the young. (Gage, Jordan.) 

3. American toad; the pits in its back are for carrying and safeguarding 

the young. (Jordan and Kellogg.) 



When, by Whom, and How? 

instructions concerning his own case and the protection of his 
fellows up to the moment of his cure. This literature should inform 
the people that ample hospital accommodations must be provided 
for the treatment of the social diseases. Not a hospital or dis- 
pensary should be allowed to close its doors to syphilis or gonococ- 
cus disease. The city should provide, moreover, ample accommoda- 
tions for every case of venereal infection that requires attention, 
even if there be needed for this end new hospitals and new appro- 
priations to maintain the same. It should never be possible to say 
that a citizen required treatment for the protection of the public 
and found the city institutions impossible of access, or accommoda- 
tions non-existent except to the wealthy and the financially compe- 
tent. Once provide such adequate means of hospital treatment and 
care, and every house of ill fame can be closed at once, and its 
inmates sent to the proper place for treatment until cured, on the 
ground that all of them presumably carry contagious disease. In 
every locality where these measures have been tried, failure has 
come through lack of hospital treatment. The proprietors of the 
houses made no outcry, they dared not. The inmates were willing 
to be treated and cured. But there were and are neither hospital 
facilities nor room. Thus the only practical means of dealing with 
the spread of the social diseases has usually been abandoned just 
where success should have been most easily certain. In Des Moines, 
J. L. Hamery, the Superintendent of the Department of Public 
Safety, first stopped the sale of malt and spirituous liquors in the 
houses of prostitution, removed all evidence of the nature of these 
houses from windows and doors, and notified the proprietors that 
their business was to be suppressed. No prosecutions were under- 
taken, none were necessary. It had simply become apparent that 
the officials were ready to enforce the existing laws. In September, 
1908, notice was given over the signature of the Superintendent 
that "all houses of prostitution, brothels, houses of ill fame, and 
all other places of like character which have been operated in this 
city contrary to law, will be suppressed and no such place allowed 
to run in the future to the knowledge of the police department." 

Provision was made for the care and employment of those 
who wished to remain and lead a decent Hfe. In the words of 
Hamery himself: *'The resorts all closed without the slightest 
trouble and most of the denizens left the city. There has not been 
an open and recognized den of prostitution in the city since." 
Again, *'We have had no trouble to speak of with prostitutes try- 
ing to operate in the residence districts," and "the most radical 
advocate of 'liberalism' would hardly claim that suppressing the 
red light districts had any depressing eflFect on legitimate business 
(a hackneyed claim), while advocates of law enforcement are con- 

I4Q 



When, by Whom, and How? 

fident it has its full share in bringing the present long sustained 
and constantly developing boom in residence real estate." 

Dr. Kiefer, the Health Officer of Detroit, writes that the 
keepers of the houses of prostitution were notified that on and 
after January ist, the health officer or some physician delegated 
by him "will visit these houses at unannounced and irregular inter- 
vals and examine the inmates. If any are found with a contagious 
disease (gonorrhea or syphiHs), the house will be 'quarantined.'" 
The placard used was a large yellow card with "quarantined" 
printed on it in large black type. In the case of each quarantined 
house the keeper soon requested that the infected inmate be removed 
to a hospital for treatment at her (the keeper's) expense. This 
v/as done and the patient was isolated in the hospital until the 
attending physician reported her recovered. Then after a thor- 
ough examination by a physician of the Board of Health, in the 
absence of signs of active disease, she was discharged from hospital 
care. This system has, however, failed for lack of hospital facil- 
ities. It is well known that nearly, if not every, prostitute carries 
infectious disease, and that very many, if not most, are in an incur- 
able stage of the disease. Moreover, the hospitals, as conducted 
at this time, neither admit, nor could they hold, if they were willing, 
the applicants for admission under a strict enforcement of such a 
regime. New York and Chicago would each have between 30,000 
and 50,000 venereal patients in the form of prostitutes to be 
taken in hand. Philadelphia has normally several thousand, and the 
smaller cities and towns, some without public hospitals, has every 
one its quota of infected public women, and very many more 
infected men, most of whom walk in and out of clean homes, 
leaving a trail of infection wherever they go. The writer has 
just had brought to his attention two instances of the infection 
with syphilis of a number of young girls by young men, in both 
instances in kissing games, and both public and private authorities 
seemingly impotent to stop the endless chain. These are not the 
first cases brought to the attention of the Board of Health in a 
large city, nor are they the first to meet with the reply that the 
law does not empower the Board of Health to quarantine for 
syphilis and gonococcus disease. New York's Board of Health 
has at last decided that it has the power by virtue of its very com- 
mission to protect the public health. Much farther than this, 
however, can willing and conscientious officials go. In every large 
city the social diseases (syphilis and gonococcus infection) must 
be placed at least upon the voluntary reportable list, recording the 
cases by number, not by the name of the patient. The city must 
at once require and furnish free treatment for all classes of society. 
The authorities must be enabled to apprehend infected persons. 

150 



When, by Whom, and How? 

and persons probably infected, compelling treatment if neglect is 
observed, and the safety of the community ignored and endangered. 
The idea that the Health Department of a given city may of its 
own initiative and authority quarantine a city block for a case of 
smallpox, roping it off and preventing ingress and egress for days 
long — and that the same Board shall be permitted to evade respon- 
sibility v^hen instances are reported to it in which an individual is 
deliberately neglecting to safeguard the public against himself when 
a carrier of other even more virulent diseases, is almost too pre- 
posterous for beHef. The public simply needs education in the 
dangers, the preventability of infection, and the means and author- 
ity will be provided without delay. 

Two years ago one of a number of attempts was made to 
persuade the Committee on Health and Sanitation of the Penn- 
sylvania State senate to report favorably upon a bill ''requiring a 
medical certificate of freedom from transmissible disease on the 
part of the male prior to the issuance of a Hcense to marry." At 
the public hearing the suggestion was made that the people should 
be protected against the social diseases by the Health authorities 
in precisely the same manner as against smallpox and scarlet fever. 
*'What," said one of the committeemen, ''you wouldn't prevent a 
marriage simply because the man was at one time infected with a dis- 
ease, would you ?" This, strange to say, was the attitude of the gen- 
eral public only a few years ago. In the brief time intervening has 
begun a mighty awakening. Five states today require just that 
medical certificate of health in male and female as a condition of 
marriage. The citizens in nearly every state have made one or 
more attempts to place such a law upon the statute books. With 
each new year the significance of such a measure is grasped more 
firmly by the people, and in good time they will have their due. 
The first step toward public safety is public education; and the 
first approach to the education of the people is the early training 
of the girl and the boy in Nature's laws. Without prostitution 
there will be no social diseases, and hard upon their disappearance 
will ride the health of the nation. 

Can the Commonwealth lend a hand in the matter of instruc- 
tion in sex hygiene? Oh, yes! if in no other measure than to the 
extent of countenancing with approval the measures the people 
themselves get under way. To be sure, with a State Commission 
in charge of the health of the Commonwealth, such a meed of 
assistance is rather a stingy contribution. No such opportunity 
exists for the sane education of a receptive populace as that afiforded 
to state officials through the occasional health bulletins, which find 
their way in abstract form into every newspaper within hundreds 
of miles. Consider the effect of the public recognition by the 
state medical authorities of syphilis and gonococcus infection as 



When, by Whom, and How? 

wide-spread contagious diseases, and of official provision for their 
prevention and control! How long would it require before an 
attempt would be made in each city of the state to make its own 
skirts clean? Would infected centers be tolerated in the city's 
center such as subsist upon the earnings of the public woman, who 
supports her protector, the politician? Would there be heard talk 
of these districts being necessary to the business interests of the 
city, because ''men would not trade in a municipality in which 
immorality did not afford means for the passage of spare time?" 
Would anyone parading under the name of man dare to make this 
claim and lay beside it its twin lie, that "the male requires sex 
license for the satisfaction of physical needs?" Ah, no! On the 
state and city authorities rests a heavy responsibility for every pure 
girl and woman infected during the reluctance of public officials 
to move and during their inane and ill-considered apathy and 
silence! Nothing to be done? Oh, yes; very much, even if it 
means the mere public alignment of the Health Commission on the 
right side and on the side of right ! 

These things should form the subject matter of the teach- 
ing of the adult. Finally, the people must themselves be encouraged 
to display more than an apathy in the face of serious conditions. 

They must be shown that this work requires material support. 
Money must be had and the people must find the funds. This is 
city and state work, and the wherewithal should come from state 
and municipal coffers and supplies. One society for the Prevention 
of Social Disease spends about $5,0(X) annually in the distribution 
of educational literature and in the conduct of public meetings to 
discuss the public welfare in the light of these conditions. It would 
not seem to be the proper distribution of responsibility for private 
organizations and private individuals to sustain this burden. Yet 
until the people require the enforcement of laws already on the 
statute books, private funds must be depended upon to supply the 
need. Public intelligence is necessary, if mistakes are to be avoided 
that will, if committed, undo work already accomplished, and sacri- 
fice ground hardly gained. The teaching must be not only strictly 
accurate, but quietly and vigorously imparted. The material 
offered must be simple and pointed enough to enable digestion by 
other than specialists on the subject. The underlying motive should 
be chivalry! The battle cry must be "physical and moral freedom 
for woman and child!" The victor must be the educated, fore- 
warned boy, grown into the loyal, fully equipped man. 

"They tell in an oldtime legend 
Of the Scottish soldier king, 
Whose name is a living spell today 

152 





The two-spined stickleback. 

Above — the nest, with the male and female fish. 

Below — the male entering the nest, full of eggs; and the male depositing 

milt on the eggs. (Harvard Collection.) 



When, by Whom, and Hozv? 

In the songs his people sing. 

How once when the war was fiercest, 

And the mountain streams ran red, 

A careless captain marked not 

Where the passing foeman sped; 

Unchecked they thundered onward, 

And the chance of the hour went by, 

And the songs of the glen and the moorside 

Keep the tale of the King's reply, 

When his friend stood shamed before him, 

Silent with downcast head, 

'Thou hast lost a rose from thy chaplet 

Yonder,' the monarch said. 

No menace of sharp reproaches, 

No taunt with a fiery sting, 

Could strike to the conscience keener 

Than the quaint, scant words of the king. 

Out of the long-hushed battle. 

And the silent years gone by 

They wake with the living challenge, 

Of a truth too stern to die; 

And the strife on the mist-clad mountains 

And the struggle of desperate men, 

Grow real to us who are fighting 

And failing as one failed then, — 

For our foes slip past unheeded. 

And the chance of our battle goes, 

And the wreaths we would lay before our King 

Are missing many a rose." 

So much by way of a suggestion as to the lines along which 
we may attempt to handle a subject so difficult and comprehensive 
that its elucidation extends from babyhood to old age, and so 
intricate that no truly modest man would have assigned himself 
to it for brief discussion. Inasmuch as no given girl resembles 
another beyond and apart from the possible family uptilt of the 
nose, the somewhat similar distribution of moles and freckles in 
dissimilar twins, and the generically awkward fourteen-year-old, 
not-yet-outgrown, length of limb, — to just the extent that every 
boy is a completely new and different version of that typical boy 
whom we have experienced daily next door, — in the very measure 
that every boy life differs from that of every girl — in just these pro- 
portions will we find the teaching of the young upon any subject 
next to a hopeless science as far as rules or methods are con- 



When, by Whom, and Howf 

cerned. The individual is to be taught, and the lesson must be 
adjusted to the individual. Faith, patience, and persistence form 
the trio by the aid of which every boy or girl or adult problem 
can be studied to a satisfactory outcome, if begun in time. Without 
them the task of studying any individual had better not be essayed. 
Once successful and the seed brought to flower and fruition, there 
will be ample return in the realization of difficult work well done 
and worth the doing. 

Faith in a Providence that works only toward the human being's 
ultimate good is as essential today as ever in the past. Those 
who enjoy an abiding confidence in a personal Father of the world 
cannot fail to feel certain that His ultimate plan includes for His 
children neither moral nor physical disease. There is every reason 
then for enthusiasm and vigor in the move toward a larger realiza- 
tion of the meaning of the word **home." Faith and confidence 
are contagious. Many a boy has held fast to principle and to the 
object in view, because he knew that he was not alone in his eflforts, 
that he was being regarded, and that manly things were expected of 
him. 

"Because of your strong faith I kept the track 

Whose sharpest stones my strength had well nigh spent; 
I could not meet your eye if I turned back; 
So on I went. 

Because you would not yield belief in me 

The threatening crags that rose my way to bar, 

I conquered inch by crumbling inch — to see 
The goal afar. 

And though I struggle toward it through hard years, 

Or flinch or falter blindly, yet within, 
'You can !' unwaveringly my spirit hears ; 

And I shall win." 

Persistence is as necessary in this as in every other seemingly 
endless ultradiscouraging problem. Only the difficult things are 
worth while. In the face of vicious teaching for centuries, who 
expects that the world can be won for clean living by a wink and 
a smile? There is a struggle ahead and more than one generation 
of true boys and girls will be men and women before the outcome 
is certain. Perseverance is the only force that can furnish success 
out of otherwise likely failure. 

Finally, true patience is that virtue, often totally lacking in 
the male sex, which enables the woman on many an occasion to 

154 



Wher,, by Whom, and How? 

bide her time and discover in her sterner mate better things than 
he is in the first place conscious of possessing, things which her 
generosity will not allow to remain in hiding. In our teaching 
we must not permit the belief that honor is dead ! By grace of 
patience boytime and girltime may be tided over into the safer 
waters not only of honor, but of self-support, home-making, and 
the havens of fatherhood and motherhood. At the conclusion of 
our discussion, does it not seem to be worth while to see in each boy 
and girl a future parent who must be bred and developed for his 
or her work and privilege as deliberately as we breed and train 
the horse and the cow? From the start they must be regarded as 
a father or m.other whose talents will as certainly depend upon 
himself or herself, and upon practical common sense and business 
acumen, as upon the will of Providence. Only in this way will 
they fulfill the destiny toward which they have been trained to 
strive. 

Surely v/e have established the existence of an urgent need of 
teaching the boy and girl, the woman and the man. Would that 
I might be sure that in this chapter there have been suggested to 
the willing parent and teacher understandable means and methods 
for obtaining ample knowledge and material to equip themselves 
for the task in hand. 

Few realize the irresistible influence of publicity, the virile 
meaning that instruction in sex hygiene would acquire, were it pos- 
sible to find space in the columns of the daily newspapers. These 
are the most natural of all channels for the transmitting of neces- 
sary information to the people. Yet the newspaper is the one 
prude that still shrinks from its duty in an inconceivable mis- 
apprehension that the people do not desire to be informed. For 
ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five years men and women have 
been sowing the seed. Everywhere except in the newspapers has 
it found rich soil and begun to give of its increase to help the 
world. The newspaper has offered not a scant top soil for even 
overrapid growth and death to follow. Its columns are closed 
to the existence of social disease! A given issue may display 
column after column and headline after headline sensational to 
the extreme with stories of murder, seduction, abduction, robbery, 
and rape, but never a word upon the subjects nearest and dearest 
to the people, those that concern sex hygiene, the physical and 
moral health of the home. Infidelity and divorce? O, yes! The 
social diseases ; O, no ! Both contagious, with a grave mortality ? 
O, yes! The social diseases no doubt fertilize the soil for other 
diseases? Yes! But to write of the ravages of syphilis and gon- 
ococcus infection? Oh, no! "You must excuse us, good sir, until 
the people desire us to take this step!" Hence an ignorant public! 



When, by Whom, and HowT 

For this reason a long list of casualties, of illnesses (some at least 
incurable), a host of women needlessly operated upon, thousands 
of babies dying or dead, and all preventable sorrows did the world 
but know through the daily journal ! And the newspapers still 
nurse the reply, '*Y6u will kindly excuse our omitting what the 
people do not desire to hear !" 

Very recently a prominent daily published in pitiful detail 
the account of three boys, 15 and 16 years of age, succes- 
sively assaulting a little girl of 13 years. A few weeks ago the 
papers were full of the particulars of the horrible outrage in a 
neighboring city of a young girl assaulted by a half dozen young 
men. The nasty details of this immorality helped the issue to 
sell, but not a newspaper to prevent these crimes by instructing 
the boys and girls, and men and women, as to their significance in 
terms of physical health and disease. It is not a moral lesson that 
needs to be taught! The newspapers know that it is the vital 
question of the health of the community! There are none so 
blind as those who will not see! One regrets, none the less, that 
the splendid opportunity of inspiring confidence and spirit into 
those who have had reason oftentimes to despair of success should 
be thrown away through that sluiceway of all others along which 
saving knowledge should run. 

I remember in my school days the emphasis that accrued in 
the construction of a sentence from final mention. The last, and 
therefore the most important dictum, always was the one that 
impressed itself upon my juvenile mind. Last, then, and altogether 
most important as a teaching force, will be womankind, for the 
very reason that she has up to now been frightfully imposed upon, 
morally and physically, because of her ignorance allowed and 
encouraged by the men. What can the women, as such, do in 
the way of instructing the citizenship of the land? They will do 
most, let me say, by rearing an instructed citizenship from and 
among the boys and girls of today. Womankind will accomplish 
much as an educational force by the sheer fact of her knowledge! 
Men stand in amazement and dismay at the thought that women 
are beginning to understand the libertinism implied in the ''sowing 
of wild oats" and of the "night away from home." In the coming 
years, if I mistake not, there will be fewer "wild oats" sown and 
more nights spent by the young man near the wife and the cradle. 

Not one day longer need the double standard of moral and 
physical health remain in force than woman requires to realize 
her power! Let her refuse to marry or to live with the man who 
insists on its observance, on the ground that he is presumptively 
not free from transmissible disease ! The double code will soon be 
observed folding its doors and taking in its sign, and a notice will 

156 



IV hen, by Whom, and Hoivf 

hang from the doorbell, "building materials for sale." There is 
only shame in the conviction that the men will not voluntarily 
bring about the new order. The women will have to go, not come, 
into their own ! 

There is very little seriousness or truth in the assertion that 
women are sacrificing the admiration and affection of the men 
by their desire to become their equals ! Let me tell you that the 
affection given by a man to his inferior wife is not worth the 
having! It is that given to the toy animal, the pet bird, the nursery 
tin soldier, all of which are thrown aside when the owner no 
longer desires to be true. When men lose their admiration and 
respect for women they also cease to love them as surely as the 
sun rises in the east and sets in the west! When men begin to 
live double lives, the one at home, and another in the under world, 
they have already begun to proclaim the subjection of their women 
and the death of the home! Love in them no longer exists, and it 
may be doubted whether the real article has ever really been born! 
Prostitution and the venereal diseases will die the death of starvation 
the moment w^omankind chooses to know and make public all there 
is to be known of the devotion of a section of their city, of every 
city, to the destruction of the home. Imagine a male marrying 
a member of the gentler sex whom he knew to constantly expose 
herself to contagious infection! Picture in the mind's eye such a 
wife being welcomed at the door at one, two, and three o'clock in 
the morning on her way home from the brothel ! Yet this is the 
"privilege" demanded by the vast majority of men, openly or by the 
inference drawn from their clandestinely immoral life! Until the 
women recognize and appreciate the significance of this fact they will 
win neither the true affection nor the approximation of their due 
from the men. Show me the day in which the American mother, 
sister, and lover proclaim broadcast their refusal to stand longer for 
the public or private recognition of the prostitute as such, while at 
the same time offering her a welcome back to fair methods of life; 
show me the time in which womankind refuses to accept any other 
than the same moral and physical standards of health for herself 
and the man ; and I will in the same day point out to you the dis- 
appearance of the dangers from marriage, a lowering of the infant 
death rate beside which that of the summer infections will be 
hardly worthy of consideration, a disgorging of all the hospitals, 
and the surrounding of the home altars once more with the little 
family gatherings that once were and must again constitute the 
heart of the American nation ! 



157 



Chapter IX. 

The Training of the Teacher 

Of what type must the teacher be? What must he or she 
know; or, rather, what dare they not know? How is the equip- 
ment to he acquired. Let me commence by saying that the teacher 
must, of course, possess a vastly more comprehensive knowledge 
of the subject than the pupil. Otherwise inadvertently perplexing 
questions put by the latter may, and very likely will, floor the teacher. 
And yet it is both astonishing and inspiring to note the success of 
certain individuals who seem at first glance altogether unfitted 
and unprepared to teach ! Beyond and apart from scientific data 
the teacher of sex hygiene must possess from the start three 
fundamental qualifications Vvithout which he or she had better by 
far avoid the attempt to instruct others, because of the certainty 
of doing harm. The first of these is the frankness and openness 
of manner that inspires confidence, and filters through and melts 
away every difficulty, especially that of false modesty, and wins 
the victory for the real teacher. The second essential is the self- 
less magnetism that grows out of making the needy individual 
a personal, first interest, and that makes this fact evident to the 
learner, unconscious all the while of being taught. A third com- 
pelHng force and talent is the overwhelming realization of one^s 
own childhood's lack, and of the dangers on every hand, an eager- 
ness to safeguard in time the boys and girls now growing and 
every day entering the workaday world from our American homes, 
some of which are real, many only so-called. 

Teachers of sex hygiene need not be artists. I have seen them 
develop out of very poor teaching material. A heart for the work 
is absolutely essential. Once this is assured parent or other 
teacher gains a courage and patience and tact that will bide their 
weary time, watching months long, if need be, for an opening and 
edging toward a vantage point that will insure the winning and 
thereby the saving of a boy or girl. 

But to pass on. How is the student of sex pedagogy to acquire 
the necessary knowledge of her craft? Once equipped with suffi- 
cient, accurate data, whence are to come the magnetism and 
personality that must be relied on to carry the message home, with 
only good, no harm, to the pupil? 

There are few mothers who are not, at least to a certain 

158 



/OOLOGIE TABLEAU A' 




CLASSE DE ""^^" ^^Ktk 




^% 





DE\ELOPPFME\T Df f aiF DL POILEI 



METAMORPHOSE^ w i a Mli ^ ' ' ! 



Development of the chick and of the frog. Photograph of an old wal 
chart in the University of Pennsylvania zoological laboratory. 



The Training of the Teacher. 

extent, born teachers, in so far as their own children are concerned. 
There never was a greater misconception, however, than that r^ere 
motherhood quaUfies to teach. The untrained mother cannot suc- 
cessfully impart the facts of sex hygiene ! Some mothers have 
trained themselves ! Every mother must herself first learn, and 
learn thoroughly by observation, study, and experience. Then she 
must realize that even her own children are all different in 
matters of sex, even children of the same age, who look and seem 
to think alike. Each has his or her own particular problem or 
problems, imagined or real, and in studying out the problems of 
childhood in terms of a specific child, the mother equips herself 
to teach the next one better, never best. 

Or is there no mother, through death? Or is the mother 
worse than none? I have seen such. I have one in mind now, 
more like a sow, and her house a pen rather than a home! And 
the children ! After the manner born they know everything about 
unhygiene, and not a particle about hygiene, sex or other variety! 
They are not immoral ! They are like the degenerate white or 
negro, unmoral from top to toe ! And as for that mother teaching 
her children sex hygiene, we might as fairly ask the summer clouds 
to send down snow instead of rain. 

Someone must substitute, and it must be a trained substitute — 
the father, a near relative, the family physician (if the right type 
of man), even a stranger, in the form of the school-teacher. Not 
one of these is a priore fitted to teach. Each is almost as much 
in need of instruction as the child at the beginning, in view of 
the soil that is to be cultivated and planted, and in the face of the 
crop that often rewards the work of a still earlier sower, the out- 
growth of earlier vicious instruction, in view of such conditions 
there will be required not only a patient, persistent, skilful tiller 
of the ground, but one of natural talent if the harvest is to be 
other than one of tares. 

To follow apt, interesting, malignant teaching with unscientific 
unattractive, inaccurate instruction, will be to invite and to deserve 
failure. It would be only worse than the present order of the 
day, no teaching at all. Both are wicked in their shortsightedness 
and neglect. Neither is the method of affection or intelligence. 

Before attempting to train a child or adult pupil in sex hygiene, 
therefore, the prospective teacher will need to realize that for a 
considerable period he or she is himself or herself by the very 
nature of society and morals likely to be a needy pupil. For many 
a day we are likely to lack a competent force of instructors. 
Schooling of the teacher will be needed in the following branches, 
with emphasis laid upon them in their order of importance. 

I. Observation. The development of natural powers, or a 

159 



The Training of the Teacher. 

beginning, when necessary, de novo. The faculty of constant, 
keen, sympathetic observation is a sine qua non in child training 
of whatever sort. 

2. A careful study and gradual appreciation of child ways 
and child life in general. This will comprise, among other things, 
an acquaintance with the child's method of thinking in questions, 
of investigating by experiment, of satisfying a perpetual curiosity, 
of weighing the value and truthfulness of an adult reply. A care- 
ful and intelligent experience in the inmost self of the composite 
child will not only repay attention, but will furnish the only key to 
the child problem. 

3. A generous realization of the value of the world principle 
"put yourself in his place." Unless one can accomplish this he 
or she ought not to attempt to teach sex hygiene. The doctrine 
is so difficult that it can only be learned and practiced gradually 
and by degrees. One cannot expect at the beginning to 
deserve a perfect mark in anyone of these branches, much less in 
this one. Yet except by mastery of this most difficult of all there 
is no likelihood of graduation into the roundness and preparedness 
of a real teacher. 

4. We have already mentioned the need of a critical and 
reminiscent study of one's own lack in childhood. Few present-day 
adults have been so rich as to enjoy a full and free confidence in 
and competent instruction by a properly equipped and willing 
teacher- father or mother. Nearly every adult can recall 
the almost complete ignoring of subjects which he or she desired 
to have explained while a child, and had much better have been 
allowed to think out along simple lines assigned for deliberate 
object (never book) study by an intelligently affectionate mother 
or father guide. With the repetition of the simple statement, then, 
that there is an almost complete lack at this time of mothers and 
fathers trained or competent to teach the child those things which 
it has a right to know and needs to know for its own proper 
development and protection, with this realization let us address 
ourselves to a consideration of the supply of the need, the speedy 
furnishing of home and school-teachers. 

Once having attempted a mastery of the foregoing rudimental 
and fundamental essentials, the applicant for admission to the 
academy of life will know, each of himself or herself, whether 
or no such duties as are involved in the teaching of sex hygiene 
are within his or her range. The attempt at self-examination 
must be genuine to be of any service in qualifying for the new 
task. Some will require enheartening after the first feeling of 
abject despair. Many more will require repression, compression, 

160 




First primitive exhibit on sex hygiene. (Part i.) Pennsylvania Society 
for the Prevention of Social Disease. 



'iS9BBI3@ 



I UV Ol.' 'P \| 1 



RESULTS OF iGNORANCE 



THEKSUttOFlSKORftfiCt 



nu^«''^rr;:£"«»mu. 






Tl!IRfS8lTS^r-«8RAtWS 



O 



MKSUlTSGff8ff5R*^CE !-^ 



Primitive exhibit on sex hygiene. (Part 2.) Pennsylvania Society for 
the Prevention of Social Disease. 




Primitive exhibit on sex hygiene. (Part 3.) Pennsylvania Society for 
the Prevention of Social Disease. 



The Training of the Teacher. 

and subduing before their self-confidence is rendered harmless and 
possible of moulding into serviceable material. All who aim at 
serving in this field must begin with a humble spirit, content to 
acquire and contribute, like the bee, a little at a time, and add bee 
by bee, to the pile of pollen-experience which will ultimately fertilize 
the world of child minds and hearts with health-giving knowledge. 
In them will be bred again natural teachers and a natural love of 
teaching, requiring an easier and saner method of instruction and 
no dread whatsoever of teaching or of being taught. 

Very soon the student will become convinced that two methods 
lie open before the teacher. The one deals with everything that is 
good and beautiful and interesting in the home. It is essentially 
home study, and considers, above all things else, the children as 
future home builders, the future mating of fathers and mothers, 
still children as yet, and the dawning sex instinct as one of the 
natural and sacred forces upon which the family altar is founded 
and must rest. Even a tiny child mind knows something of all 
this by inheritance, by absorption, by grace. If not, then from 
observation, it soon learns it or in its place realizes the lack of 
frankness in dealing with its beauty. The opportunity flashes in 
the mothering of a doll, in the care of an injured animal, or in the 
child's very dependence upon those to whom it owes its existence. 
It notices the considerate attitude of the father toward the mother 
of the home. It reaHzes very soon the unselfishness of both toward 
it, the child. The child marriage ceremony is built upon observa- 
tion and anticipates a home built by grown children who have 
only recently graduated from the drum and the nursery, to the 
cradle song and the home. 

The father and mother instincts are born in and belong as 
indispensable principles in childlife. Realizing this, one shudders 
at the barrenness of the lives of thousands of tiny parentless and 
homeless wanderers. Only the teacher that appreciates the sex 
influence and the sex power that draw together first the mother 
and father into a home, and then fasten in firm loyalty to one 
another parent and child, only the child lover who understands 
that the whole object of living for the child ought to and may be 
its development into a being that can and will produce others better 
and finer than itself, will reach the goal by the shortest, surest 
lane. 

The second method grows readily out of and alongside this 
definite home study. It comprises a comradeship in experience 
and study, a partnership in the unfolding of child problems com- 
posed of two members, the child and the teacher friend. Nature 
oflFers a wide field of abundant interest for both. Everything that 
occurs in the form of life and the development of life, in its con- 

i6i 



The Training of the Teacher. 

tinuance and reproduction, every item of beauty and brightness in 
the world of outdoors, calls with an almost irresistible lure the 
child and the lover of morally and physically healthy children. 

Plant Hfe furnishes the simplest and most natural beginning. 
Nearly all children find an interest in flowers. There is no phase 
in the reproduction of animal life, except such as approaches imme- 
diately in type of development the human being, that is not 
pictured partially or completely in the Hfecycle of the grass, the 
flower, and the tree. There is no world so fascinating, so appeal- 
ing to the child heart and mind. Flowers can be made almost to 
speak. Francis Darwin, in his inaugural addresss as President of 
the British Association for the Advancement of Science, went so 
far as to attribute to them at least the powers of memory and 

r " ----- - - n 




Showing the division of the chromatin elements of the nucleus (a) 
coil, (b) double star, (c) nearly divided stage. (After Pfitzner.) 



habit. Maeterlinck also brings us very close to believing in an 
intelligence of the flowers. One can see flowers mate and marry, 
and bear children, and spring forth in them again in the colors and 
traits of their own development. If need be, not a word shall be 
said in imparting the bits of instruction. The most simpering 
prude could teach health and hygiene and morals from plant and 
flower study in silence, with the flowers themselves demon- 
strating every step in the development of the plant family and the 
plant home, as it were. The incompleteness (loneliness) of the 

162 



The Training of the Teacher. 

single sex form, the mating, the union of the mother and father 
elements, and the reappearance of both in the new growth or off- 
spring, are all absorbable truths that can be and often are enjoyed 
by little children. 

The disadvantages of inbreeding. Nature's methods of prevent- 
ing it, the results of cross fertilization, the wisdom and necessity 
of healthy parentage, can be and are today being beautifully taught 
to children in many sections of the country by the flowers them- 
selves under the direction of mothers and fathers or school-teachers 
who have trained themselves to serve as Dame Nature's assistants. 
No book is allowed in her school. No lectures are tolerated. Wide- 
open eyes and ears are the only qualification on the part of the 
scholar! Hours of devoted application are demanded on the part 
of the teacher in preparation. As the result we have already 
begun to rear and shall furnish in time generations of clean- 
minded, strong-limbed children, who shall, of course, bear other 
like healthy specimens of their kind. And these young mothers 
and fathers will be jealous of their right and ability to teach their 
own children in that new day. 

We are led from plant and flower study to a knowledge of 
the insects, whose influence in plant fertilization has already 
attracted the attention of the child in his early acquaintance with 
his flower friends. The dandelion alone employs in the neighbor- 
hood of one hundred varieties of insects to insure its propagation 
and permanency as a species. 

Then come the fish, illustrating as they do a step forward and 
upward, not only in the development of the sex forms, but in the 
outlining of the family, the influence of the male in its formation 
and preservation, his spreading of the milt over the eggs, and the 
beginning indications of a family responsibility for the welfare of 
the eggs and the young. 

The frogs suggest another interesting and easy stage toward 
the human goal. In form and figure, in certain habits, and more 
than ever in the evident solicitude for and protection of the eggs, 
they forecast the final development of the human father and mother. 
Certain frogs actually keep guard over their young, and carry 
them with them wherever they go. 

The birds form a little more difficult study, even more inter- 
esting to the boy and girl. It is one that well repays the search 
for the nest in the many secrets of home life learned. No hireling 
is allowed to watch over the nest in place of the jealous interest 
of the parent bird. No lover so devoted as the father. Nature 
brings forth in this home a new method of fertilization of the 
tgg within the mother's body. No longer safe outside, it must 
not only be hidden away from danger, but developed within her- 

163 



The Training of the Teacher. 

self. As a consequence, to the natural comradeship of this close 
intimacy of mother and child is added, enhancing it, the stimulus 
of a sex attraction between the male and his mate and of a sex 
congress that, in the higher and lower forms of animal life, sets 
the seal upon the home union wherever it exists. By the father 
and mother bird the nest is built bit by bit, straw by straw. At 
length it is ready for the eggs and the tiny strangers. The eggs 
are fertilized, encased in their protecting shell, laid gently in the 
nest, and warmed by the mother's body, until they hatch forth 
into semi-conscious life. The boy and girl can know with accuracy 
each step. Many do today. The chicken, the turkey, the peacock, 
are all good friends of the child. I have a tiny letter hidden away 







m 



Ostrich and nest. 
(After German chart.) 

in which my own mother, long since gone Home, wrote to her 
absent youngster that she had for him "two drumsticks and a 
drum to take down to Linwood with him when he comes to spend 
the day, so he can have a soldier's funeral for the chickens when 
they die." On the outside of the wee envelope is a bluebird, really 
blue, and the more fascinating for its very trueness to life in 
color. I live the country days over with joy when I read the tiny 
note, and the Teacher is a dearer memory, because she recognized 
and understood the boy in me. No city child should be allowed 

164 



The Training of the Teacher.^ 

to grow up and out of school days without making the intimate 
acquaintance of the barnyard colony, with its rare examples of 
home-building and home-regard. In the study of sex hygiene here 
is the opportunity, ready to hand, and in the child's barnyard 
friends are the means of the teacher's and of the child's self- 
instruction. 

In the kitchen is the cat, in the front yard the dog! There 
will be found little difficulty in the time at one's disposal, and in 
the light of all that has gone before in the way of flower friendship, 
in explaining the family relations and the science of reproduction 
in these species. The child's own instinct and power of observa- 
tion will have long since prompted questions that put the false 
modesty of the adult out of commission and establish the round- 
eyed questioner and the so-called guide to learning upon a fair 
basis. The cow and her calf, the mare and foal, the dog and her 
puppies, the cat and the basket of kittens, all suggest to the child 
clean, fine thoughts, which deal with sex and reproduction in a 
healthy natural way that helps in child-building and inspires the 
human to imitate loyalty to the home. Oftentimes sex intercourse 
is actually witnessed in the lower animals. Too often the child is 
accustomed to hear the occurrence made the occasion of a vulgar 
jest. Such an event is possible when we lose sight of the fact 
that there is being wasted an opportunity for the safeguarding of a 
boy or girl, and for the preservation instead of the wrecking of a 
future home. Do you suppose a girl would blindly marry a con- 
firmed rake, with all the likelihood of disease and surgical measures 
following hard upon the wedding ceremony, if she had learned as a 
child the necessity of health in both parents, provided, the child of 
the union is to prove a benediction in the home? The teacher must 
be ready, therefore, not only to instruct the child concerning every 
other part of an animal's or its own anatomy, except the parts that 
are devoted to the most sacred of all functions, the reproduction 
of the Maker's image, but accurately regarding the formation and 
function of these as well. 

Saneness of method and fulness of understanding, with a 
view to discussing all the functions of the human being, will 
grow from a close study of the outdoor life that we all love. Cir- 
culation, respiration, digestion, all are important. But soon or late 
there comes the occasion and the opportunity for direct teaching 
concerning an even more vital function, reproduction, the origin 
of human life. As a rule it presents itself in the form of a frank 
question. "Mother, where did I come from?" "Father, is it true 
that the doctor brought me in a satchel?" I knew one girl of 
fifteen who repeated doubtfully her mother's assurance that she 
"came from Ireland." The mother would not enlarge upon this 

165 



The Training of the Teacher. 

trifling answer, and the girl studied the problem out for herself 
in the vulgarity of the street. Oftentimes an illegitimate child is 
the result of a girlish ignorance that would have been so easy to 
replace with keen protective understanding gathered from the barn- 
yard school-room. There is no false modesty in the breeding of 
horses and cattle. The importance of scientific knowledge and of 
business profit does away with the need of averting the face. In 
the open air and under God's sky one learns that both animals and 
men are intended to enjoy health and strength as birthrights, and 
that only by wise and fair methods can healthy animals and human 
beings be bred. Many opportunities offer themselves that find bare 
mention here. Most important are the excellent courses in biology, 
zoology and embryology, that can be enjoyed in every large uni- 
versity, and in many a night school. Men and women study in 
these classes and investigate both the comparative anatomy and 
physiology of the lower animal and the human being in a manner 
that stands them in good stead if properly used for practical home 
building, and to fit them as citizens, and fathers, and mothers, the 
natural teachers of girls and boys. 

So much, then, for the primary lines along which the teacher of 
sex hygiene is to study and to be taught, and for the sources of 
information and equipment. Up to now there has been no mention 
of physical or moral disease. The child has arrived at neither the 
capacity nor the need to touch upon these phases of sex hygiene. 
Later must follow a full study of the sociological aspects of home- 
life, of industrial conditions, of the divorce court, and of the broken 
home, of the brothel, and the army of clandestine prostitutes, of 
the almost equally numerous throng of innocent, infected mothers 
and wives, of the hospitals, and asylums, pauper institutions, of 
the crippled, blind, paralyzed, insane, all preventably incapacitated, 
had only the world of fathers and mothers been keenly alive to the 
fact that children are worth breeding into healthy men and women, 
not into participants in public institutional life, charges upon the 
city's care. This brings us at once upon the book portion of the 
subject, which can only be outlined in this brief chapter upon the 
teacher's training. Up to now we have discussed only normal 
health and the sex knowledge of health. This constitutes sex 
hygiene. Were the growing boy and girl not certain to come in 
contact with the sorrow and disease that spring from ignorance, 
there would be no need and no excuse for opening their eyes to 
that which must for a moment shake their faith in the world at 
large. It is my wish to offer in another portion of this book just 
enough concerning the sociological features of the training in sex 
knowledge to stimulate effort on the part of the conscientious 
student to acquire all that is to be known on the subject. Much 

i66 





Family responsibility and dependence illustrated in the nest. 
Upper — orioles. Lower — blue jays. (Jordan and Kellogg.) 



The Training of the Teacher. 

can be done by oneself in the way of self-training. Else were there 
little hope before another generation of an intelligently trained 
force of fathers and mothers. A keen natural power of observa- 
tion will carry one a long way. Judicious reading will open up 
other mines of information. There is little written, however, that 
is practical upon the teaching of this important subject. Were this 
not true I should not have attempted a book. 

Following is a brief sketch of the material that may readily 
be utilized by the prospective teacher, father or mother, relative, 
friend, or school-teacher, desiring to break the ground for a further 
planting. To that which is offered here by way of suggestion will 
be added the facts and experience and individual talent that form 
the good fortune of the given teacher. No hide-bound scheme will 
avail ! The method of dealing with the individual child will depend 
largely upon the makeup of that child! Methods that are success- 
ful in the hands of one teacher fail when linked with the personality 
of another! The child can usually digest more than we are ready 
to give ! I would suggest, however, that the student prepare himself 
or herself at least in the following particulars: 

1. The Cell as the unit of living matter, and the type from 
which living forms develop. Animal and vegetable forms of cell. 
Cell division and reproduction. The animal and vegetable ovum. 
The male element, pollen grain, spermatozoon. 

2. Sex: Its significance and importance. The earliest signs 
of sex determination in plant and animal embryonal life. The 
method of reproduction through sex union. The anatomy of the 
plant reproductive organs; of the animals; of human beings. The 
human ovum. The spermatozoon. The principles of embryology. 

3. Heredity: The transmission of color, form, and traits in 
plants; in animals; in human beings. Heredity in human beings, 
including physical and mental and moral legacies. The transmissi- 
bility of disposition and talent by deliberate maternal and paternal 
impression. The transmissibility of physical and moral tastes and 
habits, good and bad. 

4. Hygiene, personal and public: The responsibility of the 
individual to the public for his or her own health, moral and 
physical. Hygiene of clean water, fresh air, rest and exercise, 
food (digestion), dress, hygiene of all these for mind and body. 
Bacteria. Animal germs. The relation of insects to disease. 
Infections, including contagions. The needlessness of disease. 

5. Sociology. The responsibility of citizens for the welfare of 
one another, as constituent parts of a health-deserving and enjoying 
public. The bearing of this principle upon physical and moral 
health. The home as the only possible center of a healthy national 
life. The significance of marriage, of fatherhood and motherhood. 

167 



The Training of the Teacher. 

The certain social results of male and female libertinism. Prevent- 
able social conditions tending to encourage prostitution, male and 
female, public and clandestine. The direct relation of prostitution 
to the public health. The prevalence, the contagiousness, the trans- 
missibility to offspring, the public significance, of the social dis- 
eases. Their large direct and indirect mortality. The means of 





m 



Hilifti 








mms 



-ainis 



Cell Division — c c, Centrosome. (After Flemming.) 

control through education of the public to treat the social diseases 
in an identical manner with other contagions and infections, by 
reporting (by number only), by furnishing free diagnosis and 
treatment, by isolation and quarantine in refractory cases, by 
preventing marriage of the unfit. The viciousness as well as the 
complete failure of reglementation and medical examination of 
the female prostitute. The almost inevitable success of sane 
educational and sanitary methods when applied by a wide-awake 
public. 

Finally, just a word regarding the channels through which the 
teacher may obtain a satisfactory exercise in that portion of his or 
her equipment which must be acquired apart from and outside of 
self-preparation. 

In due time, no doubt, the public will provide itself with schools 
maintained solely for the training of teachers in sex hygiene. There 
could be found no avenue for the distribution of the funds of the 
overrich so productive of return to the nation in terms of healthy 

i68 




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ii£ 



^^L 



.*■»'', 



i 1.;. 7. 1,1 vnn .\>tcrin- 



..„6*^-s4^as»^ 



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/;-^^. 






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s^ 



1 



N^ 



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A^ 







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>v... ^"^ 



Fertilization of the ova of (a), asterias glacialis (Fol); (b), mouse 
(Sobotta), and (c), Seaurchin (Korschelt and Heider). 



The Training of the Teacher. 

women and children, and of wages saved for workmen of all types 
and descriptions now being spent on the treatment of physical 
ailments that should never have been acquired, and in the support 
of public institutions that should some day and right speedily 
become unnecessary. 

Until such schools are established, however, the student must 
avail himself or herself of the means at command. There has 
already been mentioned the fact that it is today possible in most 
of the universities and in some of the colleges to obtain courses in 
the brandies essential to a thorough training in the preliminaries to 
teaching sex hygiene. Thus courses in botany, biology, zoology, 
embryology, and usually sociology can be elected. Instruction in 
anatomy is always at the command of the student ; physiology offers 
every day more and more of definite interest. Comm.on sense in 
the use of these instruments is the only factor that cannot invari- 
ably be supplied. I know of more than one intended teacher spend- 
ing the summer months in training among the students in the 
summer courses of a large university. More than one are now 
devoting their lives to the work of teaching sex hygiene. 

Of books dealing strictly wnth sex hygiene there is not one that 
is altogether satisfactory from the standpoint of both teacher and 
pupil, and there probably never will appear one that will wholly 
answer the need. This is mainly owing to the fact that the subject 
is not one that admits of being taught from the printed page. It 
requires the personality of intelligence and affection. It needs also 
the firm, fair glance of one who knows a duty and is not afraid to 
speak for a cause. It calls for the conviction that the teacher is 
whole-souled and genuine, and is not carrying on a business venture. 

The teacher can do harm or good! Nay, he or she will do 
harm or good, and the teacher that is m.ost likely to do harm is 
the written page. There is appended a list of practical books deal- 
ing with the fundamental subjects which we have had under brief 
discussion, also a very much shorter list of booklets and pamphlets 
touching upon sex hygiene as such. The latter might easily be 
dispensed with and the work of each teacher be begun de novo 
following a thorough preparation in the form of contact study of 
the physical and mental makeup of the human being, especially the 
child. 

There are being given the country over lectures, some contain- 
ing useful matter, others seemingly intended for their sensational 
effect, by physicians, ministers of the gospel, and laymen. Even 
the less judicious efforts are helpful in so far as they teach us 
what to avoid. We learn from our own mistakes and those of 
others. Only those, however, that come from men and women 
who realize the sacredness of the responsibility of the attempt to 

169 



The Training of the Teacher f 

teach sex hygiene and the possibiHties that face the teacher in the 
form of good or evil results, only those, I say, are worthy of an 
audience and only such leaders should be allowed to teach. 

The American Federation for Sex Hygiene is, through its 
Committee on Work, considering the following educational plan : 

I. Education of the American people. 

We recommend the quiet, sane education of the American 
people in the prevalence of the social diseases, syphilis and gono- 
cococus infection, not only as systemic diseases, but in their social 
relations, as the cause of blindness (ophthalmia neonatonun), 
paralysis (locomotor ataxia), insanity (paresis), feeblemindedness, 
epilepsy, and the many conditions requiring surgical operations upon 
the abdomens of innocent women. 

We also recommend the maintaining of two permanent exhibits 
on Sex Hygiene : (a) A stationary permanent exhibit in the office of 
the Federation; and, (b) A travehng exhibit, which shall be taken 
from one section of the country to another, especially to such 
localities as express the desire to benefit from its lessons. It should 
be in charge of an official delegated and paid to travel with and 
capable of demonstrating the charts and pictures. Such an employee 
must be a rare man to be a useful and safe servant of the organiza- 
tion and of the people. 

We also recommend that definite efforts be made to instruct 
the public with respect to the intimate relation between 

(i) The social diseases and morbidity and mortality among 
innocent persons. 

(2) The alcohol traffic, prostitution, and the social diseases. 

(3) Low dance and music halls and moving-picture shows, 
prostitution, and the social diseases. 

(4) Mental deficiency, criminality, prostitution, and the social 
diseases. 

(5) Lack of home interest and care, improper dressing, late 
hours, improper companions, and prostitution, and the 
social diseases. 

(6) The lack of legitimate amusement; 
The unlivable, starvation wage ; 
Uncongenial, unhygienic home surroundings; 
An unsatisfied craving for finery and luxuries ; 

The general belief that a comfortable income, and with the 

latter a freedom from restriction and care, attend 

upon immorality; 
The public should realize the intimate relation of all the 

foregoing to clandestine and public prostitution, and 

to the social diseases. 

170 







• 













e-.-ri 



%*^ % 



H^^t^/ 





Development and fertilization of the ovum of a mouse. (Kollmann.) 



The Training of the Teacher. 

There should also be impressed upon the American people the 
urgent need of 

(i) A shorter workday, and the forbidding of night work, 
for boys and girls under 21 years of age. 

(2) A minimum wage for women and girls. 

(3) The raising of the age of consent to 21 years. 

(4) The offering to her prospective husband and the requiring 

by the marrying girl prior to marriage, of a certificate 
from her own physician of the freedom of both from 
transmissible disease. 

(5) An insistence upon a clean moral record as indispensable 

to clean moral health on the part of a marrying male. 
^o) An appreciation of the entire lack of justification of 

clandestine or public immorality on the basis of 

physical need. 
(7) An insistence by all women upon the observance of a 

single standard of moral and physical health for the 

two sexes. 
Finally, we recommend that the public be shown the evidence 
demonstrating, 

(i) The universal failure of segregation, medical supervision, 

and all other forms of reglementation of vice. 

(2) The practicability of eliminating from every community 

the public prostitute. 

(3) The seriousness of the problems involved in dealing with 

the above mentioned conditions that nourish and con- 
tinue in existence clandestine prostitution. 

(4) The fact that when the women and the physicians will it 

with sufficient intelligence and numerical strength, 
prostitution must cease, and that with it will disappear 
gradually the social diseases. 

TI. Literature. 

We sugg«?st the appointment of a Committee on Literature to 
which may be referred for report back to this body any and all 
literature prepared for and offered to this federation for publication. 
Said committee should also, in our opinion, produce a monthly 
official journal of sex hygiene. 

III. Public recognition and free treatment of the social 
diseases. 

It would seem that one of the next steps that must be taken by 
the Federation is the awakening of the public to the fact that few 
or no preventive measures are being taken against the spread of 
two of the most virulent and ubiquitous diseases. It might well 
prove a work by itself to open the hospitals to the men, women, 
and children who apply for treatment for the various manifesta- 

171 



The Training of the Teacher. 

tions of the social diseases, and who now meet with a general 
refusal, or such scant courtesy as to discourage further attendance. 
Laboratory examinations and tests of the blood and of other body 
tissues should be furnished free. 

IV. Legislation. 

Finally, if laws are to be framed or new measures enacted with 
a view to furthering the hygiene of the home, we would suggest 
the following as promising the most definite results : 

(a) The listing of syphilis and gonococcus diseases with the 

reportable contagions (reportable by number, not by 
name). 

(b) The empowering of the municipal and other authorities 

to handle and control cases of syphilis and gono- 
coccus disease when manifestly a menace to the public 
health. 

(c) The compelling, as far as practicable, of hospitals and 

, dispensaries receiving state and municipal aid to treat 
free of charge all cases of syphilis and gonococcus 
disease on pain of the withdrawal of public assistance 
in the event of failure to comply with the requirement. 

When all is said and done, the prospective teacher, parent or 
professional, should betake himself or herself out-of-doors, and 
before entering upon this solemn obligation should ask Him who 
in His wisdom has allowed men to bring disease and misery upon 
themselves, to enable them, in the speediest manner possible, to 
learn His intended lesson and to apply it by uprooting the cause of 
their affliction, and thereby render themselves morally and physically 
clean. 

By no means all the inhabitants of this suffering world have 
been or are bad. It will be well, therefore, for those of us who 
aspire to be teachers to learn the beauty and the stimulus of the 
precept, "When he hath tried me, I shall come forth like gold." 



Botany. 



Zoology. 



Bibliography. 

Plants and their Children. Mrs, William Starr Dana. 
Science of Plants. Conn. 
Lessons with Plants. Bailey. 
Coulter's Plant Life. (Vol. II). Coulter. 
Kerner's Natural History of Plants. Vol. II, Part I. Kerncr 
and Oliver. 

Handbook of Nature Study. A. B. Comstock, 
Hertwig's Manual of Zoology. Kingsley. 
Animal Life. Jordan and Kellogg. 
Stock Breeding. Barrington and Pearson. 

17a 



The Training of the Teacher. 



Human 
Embryology. 



Heredity. 



Sociolog>' of 
Sex Hygiene. 



The Social 
Diseases. 



Sex Hygiene. 



Human Embryology. Kollmann. 

Chapter on Embryology. Piersol's Human Anatomy, 

Heredity. John Arthur Thomson. 

Parenthood and Race Culture. Saleeby. 
Study the hospital records. Question physicians. Consult 
the charts and statistics published by the State Institu- 
tion for the Feebleminded at Vineland, N. J., also those 
of the American Federation for Sex Hygiene. 



The Economic Relations of the Social Diseases. Chapter I 

of this book. 
Social Disease and Marriage. Dr. Prince A. Morrow. 
The American Boy and the Social Evil. Dr. Robert N. 

Vv^illson. 
Damaged Goods (Les Avaries). Brieux. 
The Eradication of the Social Diseases in Large Cities. 

(Chapter XIV of this book.) 



The Social Evil in University Life. Dr. Robert N. Willson. 

Chapter XIII of this book. 

Syphilis. 

Gonococcus Disease. White and Martin, 1912 Edition. 

Educational circulars of the Pennsylvania Society for the 

Prevention of Social Disease, and similar organizations. 
Chapters II. Ill, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI of this 

book. 
Four Epochs of Woman's Life. Dr. Anna E. Galbraith. 
For Girls. Mrs. E. R. Shepherd. 
The American Boy and the Social Evil. Dr. Robert N. 

Willson. 
Social Disease and Marriage. Dr. Prince A. Morrow. 
The Moral Problem of the Children. Rose Woodallen 

Chapman. 



i73 



Chapter X< 



A Talk with Men and Boys on Physical Strength, 

Hygiene of Mind and Body, Character 

and Citizenship. 

If I had my way this afternoon we would spend it half in the 
woods and fields among the trees and birds* nests and grasses and 
flowers, and half would be passed on the stock farm in the study of 
fine horses and cattle! The dogs, too, v/ould come in for their 
share ! 

On the way we would drink deep of the fresh odor of the 
wild rose, and in doing so you would get considerable of the yellow 
pollen dust on your nose. Your chum would say, "Look at your 
beak, Bill, it's moonstruck !" Or, perhaps, instead of your carrying 
away the pollen on your nose, you would see insect after insect 
leave the buttercup or the dandelion with legs or wings covered 
with the yellow dust that rubs off when they visit other flowers. 
Does it occur to you to wonder why the ant and the moth and the 
bee and the humming bird visit the flowers? Have you ever 
thought there was a reason why they choose the bright-colored 
flowers more often than the quiet, staid little blossoms? Ask some 
older friend to explain to you the usefulness of the pollen. Get 
him to tell you that each tiny yellow speck is a thing of life. That 
the wee yellow pollen grain of the sunflower is in many ways 
different from that of the rose or daisy, and that under the micro- 
scope each kind of pollen grain has its own size and shape. These 
tiny pollen grains come from the male part of the plant, the stamen. 
Hidden away in the plant under and beneath the female part (pistil) 
of the flower, are its ovules, or eggs. A few or perhaps only one 
of the millions of the tiny pollen grains are intended to reach 
and to touch the ovules, and to mate with them. When this meet- 
ing takes place between the little specks of life there travels down a 
tube from the pollen grain to the ovule, and the life of a new plant 
or flower begins. Oftentimes the stamen is too tall for it to 
bend down or for the pistil to reach up so that they can meet. 
Sometimes the stamen is too short and the pistil too tall. Outside 
help must be called in. The pistil asks the insects to assist, or the 
stamen summons the wind. The mistletoe depends on the wood- 
pecker to carry its pollen valentine. Sometimes the one, sometimes 

174 




Kangaroo, mother-care of the young. (Jordan, Kellogg, Beard.) 



A Talk tvith Boys. 

the other, now and again both lend a hand. At such times, and for 
just this purpose, do the bright colors of a flower come into play. 
Many a hummingbird and moth would fly past like the express 
aeroplanes they both are were it not for the halt that becomes 
necessary to inspect the gala display. What is more, deep down 
in the recesses will often be found little sacks of nectar, sometimes 
hidden successfully away. Never was honey so sweet as that which 
requires striving after ! Tug and pull and squirm with might and 
main, hummingbird, and fly and bee ; for after the struggle comes a 
feast fit for bird aristocrats, and flower queens and kings ! Some- 
times the tale is almost too wonderful to believe until we see it in 
real flower or insect life ! One of the most interesting examples 
is that of the Dutchman's pipe or Aristolochia, of which I am giving 
you a drawing. You see a long tube, with an awning, as it were, 
spread over its opening. The tube is almost full of tiny hairs. Way 
down in the cup at its bottom or base is the pistil or the female 
part of the plant, the sticky surface of which must be touched by 
the pollen grains, and their golden influence be carried down to 
the little eggs or ovules which can be seen in another figure in the 
drawing. (Vid. pp. 80 .) When the pollen grain is brushed against 
the pistil's moist surface it sticks. Immediately it begins to absorb 
moisture and to swell and grow. Its little skin or covering bursts, 
and down from it grows a little tube through the stalk of the pistil. 
By and by it reaches one of the ovules or seeds far below and 
grows its way into that seed. The tiny bit of flower life that was 
in the pollen grain has com.e down with the tube to the egg, and 
given it power also to develop and grow. Look now at the two 
bugs crawling round like prisoners in a trap ! They have found 
their way in through the hairs which line the long tube and which 
are all pointed in just the right way to let them in, and in just the 
wrong direction to enable them to get out. They smell the nectar, 
which is tucked away under the pollen masses which we see at the 
sides of the stamens, too far down to reach the pistil, because the 
pistil is too short and between the stamens. In their hunt for the 
nectar the bugs and insects carry away on their back and legs tiny 
bits of pollen, and in crawling over the pistil they fertilize a spot 
v/hich is directly over and furnishes passageway for the little 
tube that soon grows from the pollen grain to the ovules. Down 
this climbs a little cobweb growth to the ovules themselves and the 
work is done. The growth downward from the pollen which the 
insect has rubbed oflF from its legs to the pistil has found its way 
into the little egg, and has brought to it the power to live, and to 
bring to life a new plant or flov/er. But let us watch the work of 
the bug! No sooner has it left the pollen on the pistil than the 
two stamens close over and hide the latter. In doing so they lift 

175 



A Talk zuith Boys. 

sidewise and upward the pollen masses and so uncover the nectar 
cups underneath. The hairs in the tube wither and die within a 
few hours, the entranceway now opens wide again, and the insects 
are free to go as they came. The awning flap then closes down over 
the mouth of the flower as a sign that the insects have done their 
work, and no others need apply. 

Another very wonderful mating is that of the vallisneria, a Httle 
water plant which you can see on many of our country ponds. The 
female plant grows long and blossoms on the surface of the 
water. When it and the male plant are ripe, the male, with its short 
stem and the stamens of its flower so near the bottom, cannot reach 
the female blossom far up on the surface. (Vid. pp. 112.) So it 
snaps its stem and flies up to the top of the water. Floating along 
with the current or wind, it reaches its little pollen masses up and 
over the edge of its mate, and with what would almost seem to be 
the intelligence of affection, touches the pistil with its stamen pollen, 
and leaves this life-giving influence behind as itself floats away to 
die. Even among the flowers the male appears to place the mother 
— the female flower — always first, and in this instance is even ready 
to give up life itself so that her child plants may live and repeat 
the story of this flower wedding. 

Do you say that there is a good deal of poetry and stuflf in 
this flower story, and you would like to know how much of it is 
true ? Every word ! And what is more, I can tell you even more 
wonderful things than these when we study the fish and the frog, 
and the bird, and the horse, and the cow, even the cat, and your 
dog, which comes almost next to your mother and father in your 
affections. In every one of these there is some part that corre- 
sponds to the stamen in the male flower, and the pistil in the 
female. 

Darwin tells us the fascinating story of the parts played by the 
cat, the field mouse, and the bee, in the fertilizing of the red clover. 
It is not only interesting, but it shows the wonderful method by 
which this world is kept in life and beauty. The visit of the bumble 
bee is necessary to the carrying of the pollen from clover to clover. 
The moth and the butterfly do not seem to be heavy enough to 
dip down the wing petals to enable them to reach the nectar. Hence 
they pay the clover no attention. Every farmer knows that the 
number of bumble bees depends upon the number of field mice on 
his land, not many bees surviving the attack of the mice on their 
nests and combs. The field mice, however, do not live long if a 
cat is near, and in this way a cat may protect the bees against their 
enemies, the mice, and thus enable them to carry on their hunt for 
honey and their work of taking the pollen from the male stamens 
to the female pistils and the ovules of the red clover. 

176 



A Talk with Boys. 

In the female fish and frog and bird there is also an ovary, 
and in it grow the eggs. From the healthy father fish and frog 
and bird come tiny living specks, called spermatozoa, which must 
reach and grow into the eggs before they can become new little 
fishes and birds. I have given you a drawing of some different 
kinds of spermatozoa, and you can see different kinds of eggs in 
the animal illustrations in this book. (Vid. pp. 132.) 

Each kind of animal has its own way of bringing the egg and 
the spermatozoon together so as to start a new life. The fish 
spreads a fluid called milt over the eggs which have been laid, 
sometimes in a real nest, sometimes scattered in the water. You 
can see this done occasionally by the fish in a boy's aquarium. 
The bird places in a tiny opening or pouch in the mother bird 
the fluid (semen), which, like the milt of the fish, is full of tiny 
^spermatozoa, all living and moving. One of these in the milt 
of the fish or in the semen of the bird, must find its way to an 
egg before that egg can grow into a new fish or a new tiny bird. 
It is the same story with the cow, and the horse. The spermatozoon 
and the egg grow together and only by this joining of the male 
and female elements do new lives begin and develop into new chil- 
dren, and later into new fathers and mothers. You were born 
in much the same way. Without a mother and father no boy or 
girl can begin to live or grow. Hidden away in every boy's mother 
is a resting place for the tiny eggs (ova) from which we all 
grow. God has arranged for men to love and to live for their 
women. Just as He has given to the lower animals the power 
to blindly, and without understanding the meaning of their power, 
to make new little lives and to care for their young, so He has 
given you and me the sacred power of giving to tiny children 
the life from a father and mother. When a husband and wife are 
married and in their home, the time comes in which the boy's mother 
is strong enough, and happy enough, and brave enough to let one 
of the tiny ova or eggs that have been growing safe within her 
become a little baby like your brother or sister, or like yourself, 
as you were when your mother first saw you. Before the tiny 
ovum from which you grew could possibly have become you, it had 
to be reached in your mother by an equally tiny bit of life from 
your father. God has arranged the different parts of our bodies 
so that this can take place. Some time after a boy reaches his 12th, 
or 13th, or 14th year, there is made and stored up within him a 
fluid like the milt of the male fish, and the semen of the bird. A 
single drop of this semen from the boy contains hundreds of tiny, 
rapidly-moving particles (spermatozoa), all living, and all able to 
start a new life if they meet a human ovum or egg. In the same 
way and at about the same time in her life the young girl begins 
to be able to be a mother. Her body is not yet strong enough to 

177 



A Talk with Boys. 

nourish and to develop both herself and a little baby; but we 
know that some time between the 12th and 14th year, or even 
earlier in some girls, the ovum or egg begins to develop in the 
ovary, and escapes from the body and is destroyed by nature every 
month. At this time the girl and woman need all the affection, 
and care, and respect you can show them. They are never quite so 
strong and well at such a time, and it is your privilege to protect 
and help them. Later on the girl marries, as your mother married 
when she became a woman. The time came in which she and your 
father longed for a boy or girl in the house. God had taught 
them that they had the same power of starting a new life and in 
His same way. He permits all fathers, when they and the mothers 
are healthy and strong, and are therefore sure to have healthy 
children, to place within the mother's body the semen, just as He 
has taught the bird, and the horse, and the cow, and your dog, and 
all the higher animals to be responsible for new lives in this won- 
derful way. We do not fully understand the way in which a child 
is born. It is God's secret ! We only know that one rapidly moving 
spermatozoon from the father meets the ovum or egg in the mother, 
far up within her body, and there a new life begins to shape and to 
grow. Nine long months your mother cared for, and carried, and 
guarded you within her body, where her own blood kept you warm, 
and her food nourished you. Then when you had grown so large 
that there was no longer room, you were born through a passage- 
way that God places in every mother so that she can have her 
baby with her outside the body, and again close against her heart. 
The long hours of pain during which the baby's body is being born 
sometimes (nearly always) mean a very severe cost to the mother! 
The memory of those hours, as well as the fact that you are part 
of her, makes you very dear to your mother! You, on your side, 
can never repay the debt you owe her for your life, except by filling 
it with love for her, and by honoring every mother for what she 
has done for the world ! Your own mother should hold the first 
place in your life because of that which she has done for you! 
You can do another thing even more welcome to her, in the way of 
shaping your life so that it will make her proud that she bore a 
son! 

Will you some day marry a girl who will also be a mother? 
Are you to become the father of her children, and with that girl 
to give life to tiny responsible beings? Yes, if you obey the laws 
of life that your Maker has laid down for you! No man should 
dare offer himself to be the husband of a fine, true girl, unless he 
is both morally and physically healthy and well! This is not only 
for his own or even for her own sake. Both you and your wife 
will owe it to your children that you do not pass on to them any 

178 







Secie>i^!ieii!/f?ajye 



L 




Developing ovum of the cat. (Bonnet.) 



A Talk with Boys. 

taint of disease, any lack of robustness or health, any tendency to 
habits that will cripple or hinder, or will eventually flourish and 
destroy the child of the home. Do you remember, boy, the stamens 
and the pistil of the flower, the sticky surface of the latter, and 
the pollen grain? Do you recall also the tiny tube that pushed its 
way down to the ovule or seed? That offshoot from the pollen 
grain carried with it, do not forget, in some wonderful unknown 
way the color of the flower, the shape of the leaf and stem, the 
hardihood or frailty of the species ! Every trait that is to appear 
in the child plant sprang forth from the tiny, yellow speck 
that lodged on the pistil, or from the seed itself. Do you remember 
the spermatozoon and the egg of the bird? When they joined they 
united every color and form of feather, every length of wing, every 
note of song, of the father and mother of the nest. This transmis- 
sion of plant and animal peculiarity and trait has been developed by 
students of plant and animal life and habits to such a degree that they 
have been able to grow into fruitage cross forms of plants and 
flowers that could hardly be recognized as springing from the 
original stock. Through recent methods of using strong, adult 
nurse plants, fruit trees that survive only in torrid climates now 
can be grown in a hardier strain in the cold latitudes. 

Very similarly, when the ovum (egg) of the human mother is 
joined in life by the spermatozoon from the father, the mother^s 
physical strength and weakness, her patience or peevishness, her 
confidence or fear, enter into her child side by side with the gentle- 
manliness or selfishness, the rudeness or the courtesy, the physical 
health or disease of the father. The alcohol habit and the tobacco 
custom both leave an indelible mark on boy and man! A tobacco 
smoker may or may not live to a green old age! His tobacco may 
or may not cost him the victory in a grim fight with a pneumonia 
or other infectious disease over which he ought to win ! But that 
it will leave its impress upon his child in the form of some mental, 
moral, or physical weakness or bias he can be absolutely sure ! A 
child will not have as strong a body as it should if its father or 
mother, or both, are not physically sound. It may be unable to 
resist temptation because of the self-indulgence of you, its parent, 
years before it was born ! Its will or temper may prove its undoing. 
It may pass on sorrow, or lack of health, or disease to other tiny 
children, all because you and the mother, in boytime or girltime, 
did not begin to look ahead, and to prepare yourselves for the 
greatest of all duties and privileges, that of founding a home! 

Run, therefore, and jump and play during playtime; but run 
and jump and play fair and square with a view to tomorrow as 
well as today ! Then rest and rebuild until every bone aiid muscle 
is ready for more! Use every part of the body as it is meant to 

179 



A Talk with Boys^ 

be employed. Train every, moral and phyaical limb to respond 
to your call and to remain within control ! This means your will 
power and your sense of right and wrong, as well as it does your 
arm and leg ! When the time for work sounds, work as you play, 
with your whole heart, and mind, and soul, up to the point of tire, 
never fatigue ! Remember that the completely exhausted organ 
is never quite as perfect again. This may help you to understand 
why some of the long gruelling races of school and college days 
do harm rather than good. A collapse at the finish means an 
exhausted heart muscle, which probably never again quite regains 
its former tone. It requires more pluck for some boys to remain 
out of a contest than to indulge, and only a sense of duty and of 
responsibility to a future home will nerve a boy to meet such an 
issue. 

Thus the perfectly healthy father and mother will equally share 
the joy and responsibility of bringing into the world only a healthy 
child. The unhealthy mother and father will almost as certainly 
see some trace, grave or slight, of their own disabilities in their 
children. 

You must know these things in time! In time means in boy- 
hood, because it is only the flash of an eye between the boy and 
the man ! Now you are looking up at your mother in the old home ! 
She is telling you that tomorrow she will be gone, the home will be 
a memory, and you, boy — you of the yellow hair and the true 
blue eyes with their firm clear look, you will be some girl's sweet- 
heart and husband, and some baby's father! On the way you live 
today will depend the strength of heart and lung and limb, the 
happiness, the sorrow, the success, the failure, of your own son 
and daughter, in that tomorrow! Live a clean, open, outdoor, 
fresh-air life! Let alone all those things that lessen your own 
and your neighbor's rightful allowance and enjoyment of clean air 
and nourishing food ! Keep your eyes off the ground ! Look your 
friends squarely in the face, with a smile not a frown! Lift your 
head up and your shoulders back, and there need be little fear that 
the old home will have cause to be ashamed of you. In this 
attitude no boy can do that which is wrong and unfair ! 

While you stand in this erect position I want to leave with 
you just a word or two as a friend of boys and men! I have 
looked deep into their eyes in school and college and in the after- 
college days. I think I can tell a square-dealer by the manner in 
which he meets the look of an honest man. One's handshake is 
almost as certain to tell the tale ! 

I have learned from my contact with boys and men: 

That girls and women expect certain things from you and me, 
and lose faith in us in just the measure in which we fail to furnish 



A Talk with Boys. 

these things. 

Among them is manliness. This does not mean a large body, 
nor loudness nor depth of voice, nor a striking fashion of dress. 
These often speak for a measure of littleness, rather than for a 
breadth of character. Manliness means grit, sand, pluck, and 
courage, seasoned with thoughtfulness of others, and modesty with 
regard to one's own talents and achievements. Manliness is not 
found to any great extent in the tease, the bully, the rowdy, the 
cheat, the slouch, seldom in the untidy or unclean. Sometimes an 
emergency can develop a man from under the covering of one or 
all of these; but he must willingly or perforce have thrown 
his old cloak aside. He must learn to know the poverty and 
meanness of his old self, and long for a new boy in his room. He 
must be born again into a man or boy who understands the mean- 
ing and the beauty of the word selflessness ! Manliness does not 
require physical strength nor beauty of form! Manliness means 
all that is honorable and unselfish and true, short of the divine! 
True manliness means almost as high a thing as gentlemanliness ! 
The genuine article is often found in a small, homely, severely 
handicapped body! 

Next, perhaps, comes physical comeliness and strength! Girls 
and women like and admire the well-developed athletic boy and man. 
This is partly because proper development means to them instinc- 
tively health and freedom from physical hindrance. Physical develop- 
ment is not the same as overdevelopment. Certainly it does not 
mean the mental underdevelopment that spells a blank. It means 
that which the Romans used to describe as "sans mens in sano 
corpore,",a sound (healthy, unimpaired, sane) mind in a sound 
body. Girls and women feel an instinctive sense of comfort and 
confidence in the strong, easily working muscles of a healthy boy 
or man. They hold in inverse importance the weight of the fat, 
pudgy man or boy. Almost no one need be ungainly stout. As a 
rule, not only the outside of such a body is fat, but equally the 
muscles of the heart, the internal organs, and oftentimes the mind. 
Entirely apart from desiring the good opinion of our women and 
girls, you and I want to be well developed in muscle and fibre so that 
we may be able to care for the home, and in order that we may 
pass on good muscle and fibre of body and mind to another girl 
and boy. 

Sympathy and tenderness are also essentials in the strong, 
manly boy. You never saw a genuine, hearty boy hurt a harmless 
animal after he once realized that the animal felt the injury. You 
never saw him strike a horse or a child, or, except in an angry 
forgetfulness, speak to a girl or woman an unkind, discourteous 
word. During that moment, as he will be the first to admit, the 

i8i 



A Talk with Boys. 

boy loses his manliness ! Your boy or your girl chum, and, by and 
by, also the girl whom you make your lifemate, ought to search 
you through for sympathy and tenderness of companionship and 
touch ! Not a word may be needed at a time in which hearts are 
healed and moral lives saved by the loyal sympathy, a feeling with 
and for — a best friend or even an enemy in distress ! Sometimes 
a bit of moisture in a boy's or man's eye stamps him as true blue! 

There is another talent and power essential to success in the 
boy's or man's hfe, and equally necessary to the happiness of the 
girl and woman. This is the habit of self-control. It is of first 
importance in all that concerns your future and hers. It must 
regulate your eating and drinking, if you are to have a digestive 
apparatus that will prove a help instead of a hindrance to you 
during active life and into old age. There are few ailments that can- 
not be traced back for their origin to over or improper indulgence 
in food. We all eat too much, and many of us die long before 
our time as one of the results. Even of water one can drink too 
much, especially of cold water, when the body is overwarm. Self- 
control must guide you in the matter of exercise and rest, of thought 
and speech, even in matters of selfishness and generosity. Few 
tobacco smokers and chewers and alcohol drinkers realize what a 
sorry spectacle they make from the standpoint of a loss of self- 
control. All realize and most admit that these drugs harm their 
bodies, and in time of stress, such as lung disease or heart muscle 
overstrain, may decide the battle against the man or boy and cost 
him his life. And yet older brothers smoke and chew in full view 
of the little fellows, and grown fathers, without apparent shame, 
poison their bodies and the air that others breathe before you and 
me. And in spite of their saying they can, few are able to stop, 
once this drug-habit has fastened its hold. America has one estab- 
lishment licensed for the sale of alcoholic drinks for every 380 
inhabitants, men, women and children. In 191 1, in this country 
alone there were manufactured 10,000,000,000 cigarettes, exclusive 
of those rolled by the smokers themselves. We spend every year 
over $1,000,000,000 on tobacco. A total of 7,270,241,822 cigars 
were made during last year. Nearly all of this tobacco is consumed 
by boys and men. 

I would ask you the question, my boy friend, have we the right 
to smoke and drink this money into the air and into poverty and 
sorrow and the grave? You owe yourselves and the country an 
honest answer! Whether you owe your Maker an honest answer 
on the same point rests with you ! It has been clearly shown that 
neither man nor boy can do either as careful and accurate or as 
much work in a given time when addicted to the so-called moderate 
use of tobacGO. This is equally true of the influence of alcohol in 

182 





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Developing ovum of the sheep. (Bonnet.) 



A Talk zvith Boys, 

large or small quantities. Both drugs disqualify applicants for 
positions of responsibility and trust in many occupations that call 
for nice work and require dependability and endurance. 

Another question should be decided while you are still a boy, 
because you may count upon never being quite as honest and 
impulsively frank in your dealings with self as in the years of 
genuine boyhood. Have you and I the right to force others to 
suffer for our self-indulgences? Your answer decides the right 
and wrong of the tobacco and alcohol habits. The former vitiates the 
air that belongs by birthright to those who do not smoke. It robs 
the community of your and my best mental and physical output. 
It leaves its mark on our children in terms of lowered vitality and 
tone, and of a tendency to brain and spinal cord and moral and 
physical organic diseases. Both alcohol and tobacco render the 
arteries (blood vessels) leathery and inelastic, narrow the blood- 
paths, increase the blood pressure upon their weakened walls, and 
gradually establish a progressive disease of the organs of the body. 
I have said enough to warn you that the man or boy who smokes 
or drinks before you, even though you admire him in other things, 
has either forgotten your best interests or does not care! You 
must measure your own regard for the welfare of your fellow- 
beings in the same fashion. Do you yield to the temptation to 
smoke and drink? Then you also do not care what happens to 
the next fellow ; you cannot plead that you have forgotten ! 

Both of these drugs tend to lessen self-control in the matter 
of the sex instinct of which we have already spoken. When a 
boy reaches his twelfth, thirteenth or fourteenth year, he begins 
to find, as a rule, that in certain ways he is changing into a man. 
His voice distresses him by its unmanageability. It deepens, his 
face begins to show a growth of hair, and occasionally there is a 
sensation (oftentimes at night) that comes sooner or later to every 
boy and man, telling him that he is taking on the responsibilities 
and possibilities of future fatherhood. At night he may find that 
during a disturbed dream he has experienced a discharge of trans- 
parent, semi-liquid substance from the same passage from which 
the urine flows. This gelatinous fluid, if examined under the 
microscope, will show hundreds of tiny moving spermatozoa, very 
similar to those which occur in the lower and higher animals, pictures 
of which I have shown you. The fluid is semen, similar to that 
of the animals. It is manufactured in the testicles, and is then 
stored up in two little sacs, where it remains until they are overful, 
or until Nature's direction, or some such irritating influence as a 
full (constipated) bowel, or some mental excitement, such as a 
lewd story or behavior, causes their emptying. In most normal, 
healthy boys and men these seminal emissions occur during sleep, 

183 



A Talk with Boys, 

or just upon awakening, with varying frequency, perhaps on the 
average once a week. In many individuals they occur months 
apart. They are Nature's own method of emptying out the 
reservoirs of semen, and they form her way of avoiding a neces- 
sity for any other means of sex indulgence until the boy or man 
is married. 

Boys ought to be told very early that the reproductive organs 
in the man and woman correspond very closely to the stamen and 
pistil which we studied in the plant and flower. The semen in 
the male human being corresponds to the pollen dust, and the tiny 
living, moving, spermatozoa are very like the little pollen grains in 
their power to fertilize and grow in union with the human ova 
or seeds. The mechanism and the science of reproduction is finer 
and more beautiful and farther beyond understanding than any 
other mystery, the solution of which has been attempted by man. 
If let alone, or if guarded with simple, proper rules of living, the 
delicate reproductive machinery and function will perform their 
duty and bring blessings on the home and the nation. Many, if 
not most, boys hear other fellows talking of handling the sex 
organs, and of habits that they hesitate to talk over with their 
fathers and mothers! Boys, do not forget that your fathers have 
all been boys like you, and are waiting for a sign from you that you 
are ready to be helped by an explaining word! Take these new 
things to them, especially such things as you believe have come 
to you from the other fellows in an unfair way. Do not let any 
fellow speak lightly of a girl or woman, because that girl was 
meant by God to be some boy's or girl's mother! For this reason 
girls and women ought to be sacred in every boy's sight and care! 
Any tale that trifles with the loyalty of motherhood, and most 
vulgar stories do, is a sacrilege. Either thrash the fellow who 
tells you a dirty story, or at least move away so that you cannot 
hear ! 

As a physician I would say to all boys and men that the sex 
organs need the care of complete neglect, except for cleanliness 
sake, until you are a married man, and therefore ready to be a 
father! Let no one persuade you that you can do anything but 
harm in encouraging more of a waste of semen than Nature pro- 
vides in the occasional emissions! Nature is the only one who 
can decide just how frequent the emissions should be in the indi- 
vidual boy or man. Unless too frequent they are a sign of health. 
Even if they become of more than occasional occurrence they can 
easily be controlled. Outdoor exercise, free evacuations of the 
bowel, less food than has been customary in the 24 hours, and none 
at night, a mind occupied with interesting play or work — these 
are, nine times out of ten, the successful means of bringing back 

184 






Developing ovum of the dog. (Bonnet.) 



A Talk ivith Boys. 

order out of what is usually the result of idleness, worry or fatigue. 
"Nothing to do" is a mischief breeder with all kinds of humanity, 
especially with the boy ! You should also understand clearly that 
the semen is needed in the body to help it rebuild from day to day. 
Every bit that is not thrown off as Nature meant it should be is 
absorbed and put to use in boy and man. Every drop of it means 
more to the body than many drops of good red blood. You know 
the *'sissy" manner and the queer, thin voice of certain boys who 
are not living as they should ! Nearly always these boys are wast- 
ing in improper habits this vital fluid, and Nature marks them at 
once so that he Vvdio runs may read ! Therefore, let Nature decide 
for you when you can afford to dispense with any portion of this 
vital fluid, and let no man nor boy tempt you to trifle with a power 
and a talent that will some day mean so much to your happiness 
and your home. 

There is still another fact that you should realize, boy and 
man ! I have already told you that the semen of the animal and of 
the human being i^ full of tiny, moving spermatozoa. Each is a 
living thing, and every one carries in its moving form the traits 
of mind and body, also the health and disease of him from whom 
it comes. In married life, when the semen is placed within the 
body of the wife by the husband, the motion of these spermatozoa 
is naturally toward the uterus or womb, in which a baby is to grow. 
Without this active motion on their part it would not be likely 
that the spermatozoa vvould find their way to meet the ovum, and 
probably the husband and wife would not become a father and 
mother. Many a time doctors are visited by young men who 
have no children from their wives, and find that not the wives are 
lacking or at fault, but the husbands themselves. When the 
physician examines their semen he finds that the spermatozoa are 
dead, or perhaps not present at all. Some former misdoing has 
rendered these former boys unable to become fathers, even with 
perfectly healthy wives. I am telling you these bits of scientific 
medical knowledge in order that you may put them to use in your 
own boy lives. 

Perhaps the most frequent of all ways in which boys make a 
mistake, usually led on by others and older boys, is in the matter of 
handling or playing with their sex organs. These are sacred. They 
are to be of use later in giving life to little children. You will 
not be healthy and well unless you obey Nature's laws with regard to 
their care. Keep them scrupulously clean, and then let them alone. 
Do not feel that these matters of which I have been telling you are to 
be discussed with hushed voice and bated breath. There is nothing 
wrong, nothing immodest about sex instinct, or the begetting or 
bearing of children. But this talent is one that the serious, manly, 

IBs 



A Talk with Boys, 

far-seeing boy will not allow trifling with in his hearing. It is 
one that brings you very close to God Himself, in that He has 
loaned you a little of his creative power in the hope that you will 
help Him use it in fashioning a home with healthy children, through 
the woman, and only through that woman whom you love as you 
love no one else on earth. 

I have already called your attention to the fact that every vulgar 
story that you hear deals with this sacred power of rearing a 
child in a home. I believe that vulgar stories and low talk are 
possible only because boys and men do not understand. You would 
not laugh about the Httle baby born of your own mother or sister. 
The one has borne you, the other will some day give to her husband 
their dearest possession, a child. You would not say a degrading 
thing about your girl chum, or your future life chum — ^your wife. 
Do not forget these are all women whom you respect and admire. 
The unclean stories are all about them and their kind, whether in 
high or low station. There is no girl that lives low in the plane of 
moral Hfe, but some man or boy has helped or pushed her down 
there. You cannot afford to take any other position as a boy or 
man than that of undoing this wrong of centuries. You and I owe 
our best loyalty to all women, rich and poor, fortunate and unfortu- 
nate. You cannot be disrespectful in your thoughts concerning 
any type of girl or woman without first forgetting womankind is 
represented by that service which your mother has done in bearing 
you, and without forgetting the honor and respect that you wish 
paid by all other men to the mother of your children. 

Just another word in closing this frank talk with boys and 
men! 

Look far ahead ! Not only get ready to be strong and well 
when the call comes to be a father, but jealously avoid any and 
every risk of losing that power. I need not tell you that many men 
and even boys fail to keep sacred this power of giving life to little 
children. You will soon hear and see that men and women act 
together, and, imitating their wickedness and folly, even boys and 
girls take sex liberties with one another that are the privilege of 
married persons only. Too often little babies are born to these 
mere boys and girls who ought to have known the almost certainty 
of the outcome, but did not fully realize it until the harm was done. 
I have told you why sex intercourse is likely to result in the birth 
of a child. No boy and no girl can run the risk without facing 
the danger of being responsible for the birth of a little being whose 
parentage they may not acknowledge without announcing their own 
disgrace. Boys used to be told that sex indulgence was necessary 
to their health. This was a dangerous and wicked lie manufactured 
out of whole cloth by those who did not wish to live clean lives. 

186 






Developing ovum of the horse. (Middle and lower semischematic). 
(Bonnet, Chauveau.) 



A Talk zvith Boys, 

No boy and no girl needs such license until the marriage ties 
sanction it in the home. 

Many physicians believe that the body is better nourished in 
the entire absence of sex indulgence at all times, and that Nature 
merely permits it between husband and wife, and does not call for it 
as a need, as in the case of the appetite for food. Do not, there- 
fore, risk cursing a girl by causing her to be the mother of an 
illegitimate child. Do not throw a cloud over the baby's name by 
giving it a life that must always be a reproach. Whatever the 
temptation, think of that girl as some mother's daughter, some 
other fellow's sister ! Think that some day you may also have a 
daughter who will need another boy's knightly care ! Think of 
your own future wife, and the pride that will be yours in your ability 
to look her squarely in the face and say, "Girl of mine, my life has 
been open and true. I have never lowered the standard my mother 
raised for me, and I have never ceased looking forward to you !" 

There is a sad, sorry army of unfortunate women, who have 
without exception been enabled if not forced to live lives of shame 
by men who have not these principles at heart, and who treasure 
respect for neither a mother nor a home. There are many men, 
some outwardly respectable, who use the name of woman only as 
a jest, and who, by their lives, rob womanhood of much that is 
sacred and dear. As the result of years of this baseness and double 
dealing on the part of men, many young men and boys are associat- 
ing with women and girls who sell their souls and bodies now for 
the mere favor and attention of a boy or man, now for more m-aterial 
return, even for money. There are about 500,000 women (mostly 
young girls) in this country who live upon the proceeds of their 
ignorant and wicked misuse of the sex function and of the organs 
that were dedicated to the sacred power and duty of motherhood. 
Most of these women come originally from clean homes ! It is 
not true, as often stated, that even a large percentage come from 
criminal parentage ! Everyone is sooner or later infected by some 
boy or man with one or both of two contagious diseases, syphilis 
and gonorrhea! Everyone infects with her disease many boys 
and men ! There does not exist for any length of time a physically 
clean immoral man or woman ! Soon or late all are doomed to 
infection ! The girl who lives a semi-respectable life, and is only 
clandestinely immoral, runs the greater risk and offers the gravest 
danger to the men with whom she associates. But all are very 
early infected with diseases that are, to say the least, exceedingly 
difficult of cure, and all are morally certain to spread infection. 

A fair-minded man or boy can take only one ground in regard 
to this matter, even from the simple physical side. As a citizen, 
as a member of a family circle, as the future head of a home, you 
dare not become diseased either physically or morally, because you 

i«7 



A Talk zvith Boys. - 

cannot keep the infection to yourself. No one can or would scare 
you into being upright and manly ! The public has rights, however, 
which we as individuals must observe! You and I cannot afford to 
infect others, however careless we might be willing to be, for 
argument's sake, over our own safety! I shall have more to say 
in another chapter concerning the physical dangers that threaten 
the boy and man who transgress the laws of honor and decency. 
They are as inevitable and relentless, almost, as death itself. I 
want now, however, to emphasize the peril to your wife and child, 
perhaps of the far-distant future, but no less really your present 
responsibility. That peril may be started or prevented today ! I 
am sure that there is a spark of knighthood and manliness in you 
and me that will decide us for the square thing in the matter of 
safeguarding our mothers, wives and children. You and I care 
what happens to them ! When I remind you that no boy and no 
man indulges in immoral associations with a girl or woman of 
whatever type, when I remind you (in spite of all assertions to 
the contrary by men who would lead you astray) that no boy or 
man can come into contact with the so-called ''fast life" without 
very shortly contracting physical disease which may or may not be 
cured, and if not, is certain to be transmitted to both wife and child, 
even years hence — in this moment I have given you information 
that should strengthen you against every temptation and every 
snare, provided you realize as well as know. When you see the 
hospital wards filled, as I have, with girls of fourteen, sixteen, 
seventeen and eighteen years of age, already operated upon or 
about to undergo unsexing operations to save their lives, because 
of diseases contracted from boys and men, when you realize that 
these young girls are almost never cured, once infected, and almost 
never cease infecting other boys and men, until the poor, shattered 
bark of a girl-body sinks on the wards of the public hospital, and 
all that remains to tell the tale is the wreckage of some more or 
less disabled boy or man, and his wife or child, or both, doomed to 
moral and physical crippling and sorrow, all for sake of a boy's 
escapade; when you see the deaf and the blind asylums filled with 
children who will never hear a sound or see the light, and the 
nervous hospitals full of cases of paralysis and insanity, and the 
institutions full of feeble-minded and idiots and deformed; then, 
unless I mistake the seriousness and devotion of the American boy, 
you will enrol yourself on the side of honor and of square dealing 
for the women's and children's sake ! 

This has fashioned itself into a long talk, my friends, boys 
and men ! It carries not a word of reproach nor even one of criti- 
cism of the world as it has existed up to now ! Let us of today 
quietly and simply begin the fashioning of a future that will 

i88 



A Talk with Boys. 

require the help of every sane and healthy mind and heart and 
body from boyhood to old age in this and every succeeding 
generation ! 

Self-sacrifice, do we hear some call it, this giving up the right 
to injure our bodies by the use of tobacco and alcohol, primarily 
because they rob us of will-power and self-control? Puritanism! 
Is this the name that certain men use for a clean, healthy life, safe 
from one's own standpoint and from that of the public health? 
It may, indeed, be that some dare to insult the intelligence of 
honorable boys and men by calling these things self-sacrifice and 
puritanism! I prefer to term them duties to ourselves, our homes, 
and to the country at large. You would cut off an arm rather 
than have it wilfully injure those dear to you. These are the arms 
that you may easily cut off before they have grown into significant 
proportions. 

This age is calling for a new type of man and boy, less self- 
centered, less careless of the rights and privileges of others, more 
patient, more persistent, with an eye fixed on a bright star, and 
that star the girl of his home. Find some loyal, hearty, thoroughly 
healthy girl, beautiful, if you like — at least, beautiful in her faith 
in you, — and be true to that girl's faith. Find her right early, 
as soon as you can afford to support three in a tiny home. Choose 
the kind of a girl that is willing to battle at your side with incon- 
venience and lack of luxury and of indulgences until you win these 
things by dint of intelligent, patient endeavor. Overcoming obsta- 
cles ought to bind her very close to you and you very fast to her. 

You should both be the stronger for: 

". . . the mystic power of hindrance 
Whatsoe'er it be, — 
Crag or barrier, that imparts 
High reward to valiant hearts, 
Light and song and strength to help them 
Toward eternity." 

Make her your confidante, your business partner, your life 
chum! And until you find and marry her, boy and man, live true 
to the wife and mother of your future home! Then will there 
already appear in the dawning a new womanhood, a real and happy 
childhood, a realization of that which is best in the boy and man, 
and a reconsecration of the man and wife in the home! Boys, 
there rest in your control both the present and the future of your 
and my America! 



Chapter XL 

A Talk with Girls. 

A Medical Man's Message to American Girls and Women on 
Physiology, Sex Hygiene, and Citizenship. 

This brief message has been prepared by a physician who has 
not outgrown the boy in himself, and who has worked for years 
among and for boys and young men. He reahzes the responsibihty 
of offering any save right teaching to girls and women. He 
wonders that physicians dare withhold plain teaching from either 
girls or women. He is convinced that the average boy does not 
appreciate the standard the girl would set for him. He believes 
equally that the girl does not realize either the type that is truly 
desired in her by the boy, or her power and influence over him. 
As the result of this misunderstanding of one another's ideals, a 
heavy moral and physical toll is exacted from the women and 
children. An intelligent use of the facts contained herein will make 
for a higher type of American manhood and womanhood. The 
message has already appeared and found wide distribution in the 
form of a pamphlet. It does not and cannot pretend to cover 
the whole field of sex hygiene. It will serve a useful purpose if it 
opens the way to thoughtful questioning and to a demand for 
further enlightenment on the part of even one girl or boy. It is 
a response to many urgent requests for an accurate, practical 
presentation of facts that are, through fatal false modesty, often 
misstated to or altogether withheld from girls and women. It 
embodies as far as possible the suggestions and criticisms of many 
of our best men and women. Before its final completion, it was 
submitted to about thirty mothers and (through their mothers or 
^her women especially interested in them) to fifteen young girls 
averaging fifteen years of age, with the request that they read it 
through and then answer the following questions, signing their 
names at the foot of the page. Three were mill girls in Kensington, 
three were employed in one of the large department stores of 
Philadelphia, three were chosen from a Sunday-school body irre- 
spective of their occupation, three were from prominent families 
of refinement and culture, three were office assistants. 

Question i. 

What do you think of this pamphlet? 

190 




Motherhood. 



(Sichel.) 



A Talk with Girls. 

Question 2. 

In your opinion, ought or ought not girls to know these things? 
Question 3. 

Is it clear and simple and plain? 
Question 4. 

Which of these facts did you know correctly before reading it? 
Question 5. 

Which did you know incorrectly? 
Question 6. 

How many had you not heard at all? 

To questions i, 2 and 3, the answer of the entire fifteen was 
invariably *'yes," usually expressed in the monosyllable. 

To question 4, nearly every girl replied that she knew in an 
incomplete form all or nearly all of the facts contained. 

To question 5, many replied that they knew little or nothing 
of the transmissibility of the social diseases. 

To question 6, most replied that they had never heard sug- 
gested the advisability of a girl's assuring herself and her pros- 
pective husband of his and of her own physical integrity. 

A New York lady, herself a splendid type of womanhood, 
and keenly interested in putting the pamphlet to its most rigid test, 
contributes the following incident experienced "with a girl nearly 
seventeen, but very immature. She had confided to the House- 
mother here that she meant to become engaged to a boy she had 
known only a few weeks. She was persuaded to refuse him, but 
the next night she came to me very woe-begone, wanting to tele- 
phone him. I took her up to my rooni and read your paper with 
her. Her interest was tense, and although she said she knew it 
all before, yet the confidences she made then made me feel that 
much was new to her. Last night she v/as her girlish self again, 
and said, 'I don't care now if I do not see him again,' and added, 
*It was the paper you read to me that makes me feel so.' " 

The testimony of these young girls seems to constitute a 
remarkable endorsement of the aims and actual usefulness of the 
pamphlet. The verdict of the many mothers who have been con- 
sulted has been equally cordial in its approval. 

If I Were a Girl. 

To Girls and Women: 

I wonder whether you know that the boys and men expect 
something finer and better in you than a jolly laugh, a trim figure, 
snug-fitting clothes, an easy tongue, and good fellowship! These 
things form, to be sure, an invaluable stock in trade. Every girl 
should command them ! But I would direct your attention to the 

lOI 



A Talk with Girls, 

fact that every one deserving of the name of real boy or man is 
thinking of you and of girls in general, indefinitely, perhaps, but 
none the less surely, as a type of her who some day is to be his 
mate. In his admiration of you, in his confidences, in games, in 
every partnership to which he admits you or you admit him, watch 
him, and you will find him measuring you up beside other girls 
and beside his composite ideal girl whom he does not often exhibit 
to you. He often carries on this valuation process without intend- 
ing to, as boys say. Deep within him he likes neither the gayest 
garb nor the highest seasoning in a girl's makeup, whether of her 
complexion, her dress, or her mental outfit. He looks with little 
real approval upon the walking model who is handsome enough 
by all odds, but mentally, morally and physically over or under- 
dressed. She cannot bend her neck, and the boy recognizes the 
fact with an invv^ard grin. Oftentimes she cannot stoop except 
at a certain angle. He wonders, with respect to this last inabihty, 
how she carries on the duties and pleasures of her day. She can 
sit down, but it must be straight. She could not balance herself 
so as to run with heels such as she sees fit to wear, and toes to 
match. Many girls, he thinks, would not dare to go in swimming 
for fear of losing the roses from their cheeks and the shadow from 
their lashes and brows. Sometimes they persuade themselves that 
these dishonesties attract and fascinate the man and boy! Look 
around you. Sister Girl! Does the boy marry that type of you? 
Not often; occasionally, to be sure! If he does, do you think he 
will be likely to prove loyal to the tinted face and the bolstered 
hair, and to the general falsity of the make-believe to whom he 
has blindly promised to be true for life? Where admiration does 
not exist, love cannot! It may survive upon regard for one virtue, 
one fine trait only; but respect and reverence and admiration are 
essential necessities if love is to be kept from dying for lack of 
its native soil! 

I am not attempting a lecture to girls ! Far be it from care- 
less, peccable mankind to criticise the altogether better, truer, and 
far more excusable sex! The boys and men have long owed and 
failed to afford to girls and women the help and stimulus that 
are their due! 

I am simply trying to tell you in man and boy language, that, 
if you only knew it, they, one and all, look to you at some time 
in their experience for true comradeship, and have their own idea 
as to what the comrade should and must be! Fortunately that 
idea and their ideal are purer and higher and more womanly 
than you have dreamed! I have already used the word "chum." 
The boy is particular on whom he confers the title! He is 
attracted by the cheery laugh, the artistic touch evident in your 

19a 



A Talk with Girls. 

mode of dress, your bonhommie. But if you are to be his "chum," 
especially his lifechum, there are other requirements than those 
of attractiveness. Back and behind and shining through these fine 
things there must be a poise, a dignity, a thoroughbredness, that 
speaks for ladyhood, in poverty and prosperity, in sorrow and 
joy, even in jest and play. Indeed, richness and poorness in worldly 
wealth count little here ! Do you see that girl with the loud voice, 
familiar manner, striking clothee? She is known mainly for these 
things by every man of her acquaintance. By and by she recog- 
nizes the fact, and begins to know herself only for these! Her 
standards lower, her vision narrows, and her hopes die out, as 
she realizes that the boys and men have failed to find in her that 
real womanhood which they hoped was there, and which often 
is covered over too deep for even its owner to be aware! 

There is another quality for which the boy is constantly 
looking in the world of girls and women. Thank God he is not 
often disappointed in his scrutiny ! Grit, endurance, patience — all 
constituting the same virtue seen from different angles — woman's 
peculiar talent, this the boy has learned to expect and to demand 
in the girl of his choice ! No mere bravado, no fair-weather 
courage will suffice ! It must be the unflinching nerve which 
enables now a natural hero, now an acknowledged coward, to meet 
the issue! Men often fail where women endure until the need and 
the tension are over! The boy thus asks something of you, girl 
and woman, which he often does not and cannot himself give! 
You will need it in surmounting life's obstacles and in carrying 
your more than half share of Hfe's burden. Rejoice in it, and 
continue earning your title as the bravest soldier the world has 
ever known ! 

Again ! Not only the boy, but the boy grown into a man will 
value and love you not so much for your beauty, nor for your 
charm, as for your ability and willingness in some measure to 
enter into the interests that are dear to him. His business, his 
athletics, his studies, must have at least a seeming attraction for 
you. You must enter into all whether he will or no, if you are 
to hold and be held by the husband of today ! Your son will prize 
and respect and prove loyal to his mother as the type of woman 
he idealizes and from which he would choose his life-partner, in 
just the measure that you can convince him, by winning a place 
in his hopes and joys, that you understand him and wish to con- 
tinue a vital part of his life and to have him a permanent part 
of you. By this very means and by this alone you may keep him 
true to both the old home and to a new home to be founded some 
day in the future. 

If girls only could and would realize their influence over the 

193 



A Talk with Girls. 

future lives and upon the family integrity of their own and other 
girls' future husbands and fathers, many a careless word, many a 
trifling with serious matters, many a thoughtless irreverence and 
sacrilege, would straightway become impossible. 

No girl should run the fatal risk of marrying into a partner- 
ship in which the husband has all the education, talent, and brains! 
You must equip yourself to be his more than equal, if you are 
to retain the love of the twentieth century boy and man ! A single 
point will serve as an illustration. Do you know why boys are 
so often untrue to their ideals, and to you, girls and women? Do 
you understand why many otherwise fine, manly fellows are care- 
less and weak on their moral side? It is at least partly because 
you have for centuries allowed them to suppose that you are 
willing to be blind, and because you are thereby encouraging in 
them a standard of living lower than any they would dare set 
for themselves ! 

Should a girl look forward to marriage and a home ? Aye, 
indeed, . the mother in her has a right to dem.and from the future 
a loyal mate, and one whose loyalty shall never wane ! Shall a 
girl enjoy the privilege of expecting in wedlock the same physical 
health and happiness that fall to the lot of the boy and man? 
When the world of girls and women take pains in selecting their 
husbands, and in refusing the morally and physically unlit, then 
and only then, will women come into their rightful estate of m.oral 
and physical robustness and health ! This is your birthright or 
society has gone sadly askew ! Votes for women wnll follow, 
whether or not they precede, their insistence upon a single standard 
of virtue for women and for men ! Political equality will run 
close beside the enforcement of your demand that men shall be 
allowed no moral or immoral privileges that are denied to the 
women! You must win a full comradeship, or you had better 
not marry! Everything desirable is possible of achievement in 
the happy married state; but you must marry a man who will by 
his manner of living guarantee to you that happiness in health 
which you have a right to enjoy ! 

Let your boy husbands understand in advance that they are 
marrying not mannish wives, but complete, well-rounded women! 
Then and only then will you experience homelife as it should be 
known, and find a satisfaction in your life-comrade and in your 
children such as no parent, no brother or sister, no outside friend 
can furnish ! 

If I were a girl — 

I would want to be told simply and very plainly all that is 
necessary to open my eyes to the beauty and good in this world 

194 





^^*^ 



~1 




Earliest visible beginnings, and development of the human ovum within 
the uterus. (Kollmann.) 



A Talk with Girls, 

of ours, and to all those things that will help me to be a useful 
force in it. I would wish to help in keeping very sacred marriage, 
the home, and woman's privilege of motherhood. Even if it is 
necessary for me to know. more than I would prefer of the dark 
side of life, I would face the issue in the knowledge that only 
intelligently clean and pure minds and hearts can help God cleanse 
his world of the sorrow and misery that come from disobedience 
of his laws. Thus, I would want to know the why and the where- 
fore of happenings like the following : 

In the Philadelphia General Hospital there died, a few months 
ago, a little girl of fourteen years. 

In the children's department, on the same day, died the tiny 
baby of this child-mother. At the foot of the little girl's bed sat 
half-frightened, half-bewildered, ignorantly sorry, the baby's 
father, twenty-one years of age. All three, boyfather, girlmother, 
and tiny babe, were infected with a disease that had come to them 
through the boy's ignorance and wrong-doing. The two innocent 
ones of the three paid their lives as the price of the boy's error. 

Because there are many such happenings in our cities, and 
more every year in our towns, usually due to some form of ignor- 
ance on the part of the boy and the girl, I would want to understand 
very early: 

First. That a new being springs only from the joining of a 
male and female life. The rose, the fly, the fish, the bird, the 
higher animals, are all male and female. In the flower the insect 
or the wind carries the male pollen dust into contact with the 
female pistil and the tiny ovules at its base before a new flower 
can be born. The male fish spreads the milt over the eggs of the 
female. In the bird, the cat, the horse, and in human beings, the 
mother and the father are both necessary to the life of the offspring. 
The egg cannot become a bird unless it has been fertilized within 
the mother by the father of the nest. Even more wonderful is 
the forming of a new child out of the ovum or tgg that has, 
months before, been started toward birth in a woman by its union 
with the spark of life that comes from the father. 

Next, I would feel that I should be told, that only thoroughly 
healthy boys and girls grow to be healthy fathers and mothers, 
and give life to healthy children; and, that a perfectly healthy 
father and mother cannot bring into the world an unhealthy child. 
Also, that the mother and father, one or both, are directly or 
indirectly responsible for any lack of health and strength and of 
mental and moral stability on the part of their children. These 
laws are given proper attention and observance in the breeding of 
horses and cattle. Only in the begetting of children are they 
totally ignored. 

T95 



A Talk with Girls. 

I would want to know all about my physical and moral self. 
Thus, I would want to know and understand — 

That my body is formed so that I may be able to bear 
children. There would be no room for doubt that the ordeal and 
the high honor of motherhood were by nature meant for me. 

That, whatever I think about my right to choose what I shall 
do and how I shall live, at least if I am to be a mother I have 
not the right to do anything that will prevent my being healthy 
and well. 

That the opportunity and joy of laying a solid foundation 
of health and vigor for future motherhood are to be sought and 
found in the outdoor life of robust, even of tomboy girlhood ; and 
if, under certain conditions, only the city outdoor exercises of run- 
ning, walking and games can be enjoyed, these are as important as 
food and drink to the girl and her future child. Sane instruction 
and guiding in the matter of food, drink, exercise, rest and dress, 
should certainly be mine by right as the mother of future citizens! 
It would be my duty to use these things to make me strong and 
beautiful in helping others ! Not one of them should hold me a 
slave! Much can be done later, if not too late, in the way of 
bringing health out of disorder; but, if I were a girl, the immediate 
present would seem to me the useful and urgent opportunity to 
learn and understand these things ! 

That the girl of twelve, or thirteen, or fourteen years of age is 
soon to feel certain changes taking place in her mind and body that 
mean she is passing out of girlhood into the life of a woman. 
These changes, when understood, all have their meaning, and help 
to make life serious and beautiful. 

This is the time above all others in which the young girl needs 
the affectionate, intelligent comradeship of her mother, thoroughly 
alive to the physical and moral needs of her daughter. 

I would want to know why the figure and form become more 
graceful and round than that of the awkward girl, the hips become 
broader and the voice a little lower in pitch; why the girl's whole 
method of thinking alters ; why she begins to care how she appears 
in public. She knows she is different, but rare is the girl who 
understands that all these changes are part of her equipment as a 
future mother. In order to make room within her abdomen for 
a safe resting place for her possible child the space broadens, and 
the organs that have to do with the earliest life of the tiny ^gg and 
its safeguarding, while developing into a perfectly formed ,baby, 

196 



A Talk with Girls. 

these organs, the uterus (womb), the tubes, the ovaries, all begin 
to develop and grow. At some time during this period of puberty 
(twelve to sixteen) though in many ways she is not sufficiently 
developed to bear a child, it is already possible for the young girl 
to become a mother. Usually, her first warning as to this fact is 
a flow of blood from the uterus and from the external genital pas- 
sage. At intervals of about 28 days, a tiny ovum or tgg is 
discharged from the ovary through the tube and the uterus. The 
flow of blood that occurs at this time is the result of and actually 
forms a part of a general housecleaning process preparatory to a 
possible conception. If the ovum is joined within the tube or 
uterus by the spermatozoon or living element from the father, 
the beginning of a new life (conception), takes place, and the ovum 
is not then washed away. The menstrual flow is thereafter not 
needed and disappears; while the uterus steadily grows into a size 
and shape that fit it to be a safe home and resting place for the 
little child until the day of birth. A full knov/ledge of these facts 
would not only prevent me from worrying over and getting harm 
from things which I do not easily understand, but would prevent 
my risking by their misuse the health of any of the organs of my 
body. It would also compel me, from a sense of duty, to respect 
and to treasure, and to prepare my body to use in the right way 
this privilege and talent of motherhood, under the bond of marriage. 

I would also want to understand at least a little of all that 
is expected of me as a wife and mother. It would certainly be 
unfair that I should be allowed to marry, as many girls do, with- 
out understanding the sexual outcome of the physical union of 
husband and wife. The flower and the frog know only flower and 
frog instinct, and the life of their offspring comes into being with- 
out any close intimacy on the part of the parents. God has decreed 
that the human father and mother shall be "One" ; hence the form 
of sex intercourse that provides at once for the meeting of the 
ovum (in the mother) with the spermatozoon (from the father), 
and the housing of the growing child until the day of its birth. 

I do not know why girls are not told before marriage that 
normal, healthy men and women are intended to, and should enjoy 
an identical sex pleasure in married life; that this instinct is God- 
given, and is not one of which, when rightfully used, we should be 
ashamed. Surely a girl should also be told by her mother or phy- 
sician in advance of marriage that sexual indulgence to the point 
of physical ill-being is certain to result in harm. As the result 
of centuries of training in ignorance, false modesty and repres- 
sion, many women, sexually cold and indifferent, marry men who 
are over-developed in this most powerful and least controlled of 

197 



A Talk with Girls. 

the physical appetites. Fortunate then the girl who has in advance 
the requisite knowledge and the keenness of judgment to choose 
for her husband that man who is knightly, and courteous, and 
considerate of her in all matters, great and small. Only such a 
man and such a woman will be likely to strike a balance in the 
necessities of true happiness and health in the sexual life, and to 
place before all earthly things the welfare of the tiny stranger that 
is to come into their home. On the sex instinct homes are founded, 
and rise or fall upon its development into the finest or the lowest 
type of love. 

I ought to be told that the sex instinct can be made to serve 
a good or bad purpose. I ought to understand that the cut of 
my dress, a reckless freedom of manner and talk, my allowing 
the caresses and other advances of boys and men may arouse in 
them an unhealthy passion, such as may bring serious harm to 
some other girl, if not to me. The responsibility for her harm 
would be partly mine. 

I would like to know a little more about the so-called cross 
of child-bearing. It seems to me that every girl looks forward 
with a sort of instinctive eagerness from the love she bears for 
her dearest and homeliest doll to that which she will lavish on 
each newest real child. What a pity were I to do anything as a 
girl that would prevent my pressing close to me my own baby in 
some future day! What a nightmare the thought that some care- 
less or ignorant error of mine might result in an imperfect child! 
What a joy to the growing girl to look ahead to the time in which 
to her as a girlmother, in spite of every cost, her child and mother- 
hood will be more than all else worth while ! 

/ would want as a future mother to know something about 
boys and men in general, thus : 

If I were to marry — 

I ought to know far in advance much about their physical 
bodies and functions, just as they should understand all that closely 
concerns them in me. On all sides, the ignorance of young girls 
as to the risk and result of sexual intimacy with even young boys 
is costing them their honor, and too often bringing into the world 
tiny beings to unmarried parents, who neither welcome nor have 
any love for the children of their folly. Every boy and girl should 
know that the seminal fluid from the boy who has passed the 
period of puberty (about the fourteenth year, often earlier) con- 
tains myriads of tiny particles (spermatozoa), all living and in 
active motion, one of which, if it meet an ovum in her uterus or 
tube, will result in the development of a child. I think that many 

198 






Further development of the human ovum. Kollmann.) 



A Talk with Girls. 

a girl would hesitate before selling her honor, if she knew before- 
hand the scientific probability of her bearing a child. There can 
be no more tragic happening than the unwilling motherhood of an 
unmarried girl. 

I would feel it my right to know that from the standpoint 
of physical health no boy or man needs illicit sexual indulgence 
a whit more than does a girl or woman. Physicians now agree 
that much of the teaching to the contrary has been for an object 
and is a lie. This lie constitutes the only excuse for the double 
standard of moral and physical health for the two sexes. There 
is abundant evidence to show that in the nourishment and develop- 
ment of the body are needed and would be put to prompt use 
every vital fluid and every spark of nervous energy that are wasted 
in such spendthrift measure in sex indulgence. 

I ought also, as an intelligent being, to see in all directions 
in many of my relatives and friends, male and female, positive 
proof that the sex function, unlike many others, suffers no harm 
from disuse. Clean moral and physical living has been rendered 
possible by a definite provision, which, in the male, takes the form 
of the nocturnal dream and discharge of semen (seminal emission), 
and in the female occurs in the nature of a dream that involves 
a similar expenditure of nervous energy and, in all likelihood, of 
activity on the part of the ovaries. These phenomena, so often 
exploited by the quack and the charlatan as diseased states for 
the purpose of money gain, should be regarded as the natural 
safeguards of the home. I cannot quite see how mothers and 
physicians justify themselves in keeping these essentials from 
girls, who need for their own safety to understand the simple 
physiological facts about themselves and men. 

On the basis of these facts, I would take high ground in my 
demand that public prostitution straightway be caused to cease. 
Were there no other reason than the fact that my future husband 
or some other woman's husband must support the public woman 
if she is to continue to ply her trade, his moral standard would 
of itself be sufficient to inspire in me a love or horror of him who 
appears before me in the role of prospective husband. I would 
remain single rather than marry a physically or morally infected 
man. All of these public women carry and transmit contagious 
disease contracted from such a boy or man. I would avoid this 
fate, if I were a girl. 

I would have the right to know that several hundred thousand 
of my sisters are publicly selling their souls and their bodies in 

199 



A Talk with Girls. 

this free land, at the same time almost invariably contracting con- 
tagious disease and soon thereafter wrecking the health and home 
of many a boy, who knows, but risks the danger of illicit pleasure. 
These public girls (rather than women) in many instances come 
from clean homes, and are at times led as ignorant girls into lives 
of shame. The department store, the factory, the business office, 
the idle man and boy, the professional procurer and cadet, the long 
working hours, the lack of legitimate pleasure and relaxation, the 
dance hall, the average theatrical show, the poverty that almost 
forces against one's will, these are the conditions that I would 
investigate for the sake of my sorry, prostrate sisters, if I were a 
girl. Who dares say that I have not a right to a knowledge of 
these conditions and to the privilege of attempting to lend a hand 
to these women? Certainly the boys and men must not object, 
since they have forced the girls and women down, and are keep- 
ing them there. The mom.ent the men are willing they must rise. 

I would wish and need to be told that as the result of immoral 
association with these public girls a large percentage of our boys, 
the recklessly careless as well as the genuinely bad, are infected, 
beforfe they reach a marriageable age, with one or both of the two 
contagious social diseases, either of which may be transmitted to 
me and my child, yet unborn. 

This implies, of course, the fact that there are boys and men 
who appear clean and fair, and yet are not and may never be fit 
to marry. Therefore, I must have exactly the amount of protect- 
ing knowledge that will enable me to choose between the clean and 
the unclean. 

I ought to be told very plainly the influence that alcoholic 
drinks have had in the fall of many a girl. The dangerous power 
of alcohol (beer, wine, ale, porter, whiskey) to dull the mind, to 
blunt the conscience, to weaken the will-power, should be made 
clear to every boy and girl and man and woman. It has been 
practically shown that when the use of tobacco and alcohol is 
stopped in houses of ill fame, the business of selling the bodies 
and souls of girls in those houses promptly comes to an end. They 
require one another's aid. If America is to rid herself of prosti- 
tution, she must wipe out the ignorance on the part of her young 
people with regard to the danger in the moderate as well as the 
immoderate use of alcohol. The first glass is often the means to 
the girl's moral and physical ruin. Bad men and women know 
this and make the step easy for her. 

I would want to know that the confirmed drinking man, espe- 
cially he who indulges to excess, even occasionally, is almost certain 

200 





Development of the human ovum. Twins. Upper — one placenta. 
Lower — two placentae, (Kollmann.) 



A Talk with Girls. 

to be an immoral character, and, as a consequence, a carrier of 
contagious disease. There are clean men, but their habits are 
open and fair. 

With this as a standard, fewer girls would select their friends 
and husbands from the class of profligates who are often regarded 
as the most winning suitors. No matter how attractive he is, I 
ought to know that the dissipated (fast) man is likely to be dan- 
gerous from the standpoint of physical disease. 

I would want as an intelligent citizen, alive to the best inter- 
ests of my city, state and country, to hear the results of ignorance, 
namely the statistics telling of the prevalence of gonococcus infec- 
tion and of syphilis, of the asylums crowded with the blind, the 
hospitals full of syphilitics, of paralytics, of the feeble-minded and 
insane, of the operating rooms supplied with abdominal surgical 
patients in the form of innocent, infected women, of the physical 
deformities of children, of the thousands of baby deaths each year. 
Spread these statistics in the light of day and they will become 
impossible in the future. 

I would feel it necessary also to know and to take to mind and 
heart the fact that the prevailing attitude of man and womankind 
toward the erring girl is neither helpful nor right. Nor is it calcu- 
lated to lift her from her fallen state. Because she continually 
threatens others with her infectious disease, there is open to her 
neither marriage, employment, nor a welcome to any contact with 
society. Yet she is still a woman, who may have been forced into 
her present position by some man, often a mere boy. Her problem 
is the saddest and darkest of the twentieth century, and I can 
imagine that it might, under certain conditions, become mine, if I 
were a girl. I would not, therefore, be denied the privilege of 
assisting in its solution, in my capacity as a woman loyal to the 
pride and honor of her sex. 

/ ought to realize in order to become a good mother — 

That, women have slowly and unwittingly allowed themselves 
to become a race of beings morally and physically subject to men. 
They retain the intellectual power to rise from this low state. 

That, as a class, women are also a race of needlessly chronic 
invalids, largely owing to their ignorance of the type of man 
that is fit to marry and to give them children. 

That, very many supposedly sterile women are childless owing 
to their husband's former, supposedly cured infection, which has 
first rendered him unable to beget children and too often has 

201 



A Talk with Girls. 

brought the same disabiHty to his wife, through or without the help 
of the surgeon's knife. 

That, illegitimate motherhood falls to the lot of too many 
untaught girls. The rich and the poor contribute to the army of 
unfortunate rather than sinning women. Parents, teachers, munic- 
ipalities, the National Government, are far more to blame for their 
neglect than is the individual victim of natural passion and of man's 
disregard of woman's honor. 

That a large percentage of stillbirths and abortions, as well as 
a large number of infant deaths, is due to the infection of inno- 
cent wives by infected husbands, often apparently cured of former 
contagion. 

I would also feel it necessary to know in order to protect my 
future children — 

That, many little ones enter upon harmful physical and moral 
habits which may be prevented by simple, affectionate, intelligent 
instruction given in time. It can be laid down as a general 
principle that every misuse of the organs of reproduction is to 
some extent harmful. 

That, many deformities, blemishes and imperfections in other- 
wise perfectly formed children are the result of physical infections 
in ignorant or conscienceless people who should not have married. 

That, the training of mothers and fathers must begin in their 
own childhood, or their education will suffer to a greater or less 
extent, as the result of the parents' ignorance or neglect. Approxi- 
mately one-fifth of all the totally blind in our asylums are there 
because the public has refused to recognize the imminence and 
need of publishing the danger from the social diseases. The official 
French records inform us that twenty-five thousand infants die in 
France in a single year from one of these diseases. The number 
is probably greater in this wide country, in which no records are 
kept and the social diseases are still officially non-existent. 

That our institutions are full of motherless and fatherless or 
parentless children, the harvest of ignorance rather than of shame. 
The percentage of child idiocies, of deficient mentalities, of 
incompetent bodies due to ignorant, preventable infection of the 
parents, cannot be computed today. It is so large as to overtop 
the stmi of the influence of all other contagions. 

And, finally, in my capacity as a girl or woman, I would try 
to remember that the Constitution of the United States looks on 

202 



A Talk with Girls. 

me as a citizen. As such, I would examine myself with respect 
to my conscience concerning: 

(i) My duty as a self-respecting individual to refuse longer 
to tolerate the devotion of a portion of my city to immorality and 
the spread of physical disease. 

(2) The possibility of protecting girls in all classes of society 
from immorality and physical infection by raising the age of 
consent by statute to twenty-one years. 

(3) The advisability of providing for the apprehension and 
punishment of the male offender upon the same moral basis with 
the girl or woman, if either be punished. 

(4) The necessity for every girl to offer and to require of her 
prospective husband as a matter of right and custom the certificate 
of a reputable physician, preferably her own, to the effect that he 
and she are, as far as ascertainable, free from transmissible disease. 

(5) The imperative need of having all boys understand that 
they must choose, while still boys, between friendship with true 
women and. girls and intimacy with immoral women. Their choice 
of the latter will constitute a public acknowledgment that they are 
morally and physically unfit to associate with the pure or to preside 
over a home. 

(6) The obligation that rests upon all citizens, male and 
female, to inform themselves with regard to the important 
principles of sex hygiene, and to promote in every way possible 
their entrance into the individual lives of the people, through sane 
teaching in the home, the school, the lecture hall, the pulpit. 

If I were a girl — 

I would feel that I had succeeded in accomplishing a definite 
good during my life had I only brought the facts touched upon 
in this leaflet to the attention of some one whose ignorance or half- 
knowledge might otherwise have brought her into danger. This 
would be a rare satisfaction to any girl who realizes her individual 
responsibility for the welfare of her neighbor. 

As I read back through my many "woulds" and "wishes," one 
conviction stands out clearly before me. In spite of all that exists 
of bad, warped, twisted humanity, there is still around and in 
us a wide world of fine, true, often misguided, yet genuine boy- 
hood and girlhood that can be developed into a new citizenship 
and a new America. Unnecessary ignorance is the opposite of 
innocence, and is always a source of grave danger. 

I would feel, if I were a girl, that I was enabled to live a 
cleaner, purer, more healthful life because of a practical knowledge 
of sex hygiene and of the dark, as well as of the sunny side of 

203 



A Talk with Girls, 

life. I am glad, therefore, when the tale is all told, to breathe 
deep, and to say boldly and with confidence in the future: 

"I believe in the good great world, and I love it, 
I love and believe in man, and the call 
Of the soul that is in it, and yet above it, 
I believe in the God that made it all." 



^64 



Chapter XII 

What May be Expected of the Equipped Boy and Girl? 

What of the Boy? 

It would seem warranted to anticipate in him an increasingly 
intelligent understanding of his natural functions, and in due time, 
of the personal and public danger involved in transgression of the 
laws of moral and physical hygiene. At this station the teaching 
is jufi<" begun! While experience shows that the realization of per- 
sonal danger cannot be depended upon to prevent catastrophe in 
many an instance, in at least a few it proves just the influence that 
decides a calculating mind against exposure. In every boy and man 
the knowledge of almost inevitable physical damage will result in 
a brief pause that may prove a saving interval ! But too much 
dependence should not be placed upon the punitive method! The 
personal risk has in certain coses even seemed to add to the force 
with which the temptation hai exerted its power! 

We may expect in botli boy and man, however, a new and 
more perfect realization of responsibility to those whom they hold 
dear ! In this new bond we may confidently hope for the prevention 
of many a broken home, and perhaps for the salvage of more 
than one! It has proven easily possible for the boy, and even the 
man, to deliberately lie down beside disease that was sure to 
grasp him! With eyes wide open, not only to danger, but to the 
almost certainty of a perhaps incurable infection, mankind has 
persisted centuries long in the evil that has fostered his own and 
his neighbor's disease ! Now for the first time has it been brought 
to his attention that the danger threatens not only him! He now 
knows of the army of innocent wives, infected through supposedly 
cured husbands ! He has learned with increasing remorse of his 
stillborn children from the wife infected by him! He has perhaps 
seen her die on the operating table, owing to him ! 

He has seen the Wind and deaf child, and that child born 
for a little time only, cursed with diseases which men are beginning 
to recognize may and often do lead or follow to the grave ! He has 
had the opportunity of seeing on every hand examples of infection 
by means of articles in daily use, and the practical certainty that 
with his infection occurs also that of some member of his home 
circle! It remains to be seen whether or no this knowledge will 

205 



What are We to Expectf 

strike sufficiently deep, and if not whether the innocent will continue 
to allow him to put them to sorrow and shame. If the mother, the 
sister, and wife, of the future continue to tolerate the existence 
of a double standard of morals with the facts in hand, it will be 
because they are careless of their own safety and of the right of 
their children to be born and to live! They should not be called 
upon to act, but the remedy is at last within their reach! I think 
the boy will handle the problem! 

Finally, we should expect in the informed and trained heart 
and mind of the fully equipped boy a new sense of loyalty to 
his fatherland, to its fair name, and to its future. The instruction 
of the boy implies the beginning of an endless chain of intelligently 
educated fathers and men! The clean citizen will not only retain 
the power to beget children, but he will understand from today 
the only possible manner in which to keep his children clean. 
One office boy in Philadelphia, on learning that there exist these 
dangers to boykind, insisted that he be provided with ample 
knowledge and the means to place the facts in the hands of "his 
friends." The coming generation of fathers will instruct their 
boys as you and I have not been taught and informed. Their 
teaching will be based not only upon the moral and physical law. 
but upon the law of good citizenship. To wilfully or carelessly 
infect another will some day be a crime, and to render oneself 
physically incapable in a criminal manner will not long after that 
day be considered the act of one regardless of his duties to God 
and State! 

To teach that the social evil is inevitable has been the final 
resource of the lazy and wicked, and the pitfall of the ignorant! 
The demand for a licensed and regulated prostitution has amounted 
to a bold encouragement of our boys and young men to expose 
themselves as safely as possible in a criminal manner to physical 
disease! With the demonstration by medical men that the morally 
clean man is the only safe citizen from the standpoint of physical 
infection and contagion we have had the question of health 
and morals placed upon a new plane that renders possible a new 
standard of attainment. In educating the boy will we not have 
ennobled the man, and in this way have replaced him in his proper 
position as the defender of womankind and the nation? 

May we not expect him to say and to live the words, in all 
genuineness of truth, — 

"Oh, the sun gives warmth and light indeed/* 

Said the man whose faith was true; • 

! So he raised his shades, threw open his blinds, ■ 

And let that sunshine through. 

206 



IVhat are We to Expect? 

What the lamp and fire for the other did 
. He let the sunshine do. 

What of the Girl? 

I think we may be sure that when the facts are all spread 
before the girl and woman there will be neither bewilderment nor 
confusion, but a prompt addressing of themselves to a practical 
study of the situation! The why and the wherefore of th6 
inequality of the two sexes with regard to mutual moral courtesies 
and respect will form an important part of their investigation ! We 
can hear many a young girl asking, ''Mother, why do women live 
bad lives? What do you mean by saying that men want them to?" 
Can you picture such an apathy as exists today among women twenty 
(aye, even tell) years from now over the herding and driving of fifty 
thousand new and clean young girls each year into the houses of 
prostitution to fill the places of the dead ? Ah, no ! my friends ! 
The educated girl, side by side with her clean-handed brother, is 
to be the savior of the situation ! On what basis of dignity or self 
respect can she remain quietly at home, and realize that the boys 
of her acquaintance are leaving her parlor, or the ballroom, or the 
theatre, and going thence by as straight a road as possible to toy 
with broken lives and painted, half-dressed creatures, who once 
were as innocent as she? Some boy or man has placed each one of 
these girls where they are! They are pushing more down! Dare 
she look lest she find her father or brother among the motley throng 
besieging the houses of prostitution from the moment the night 
falls, until it is time to slink home in the gray dawn, and, if dis- 
covered, say it was "the fault of their liquor?" Has she the 
courage to look at the line of young boys in a neighboring city, not 
one over seventeen years of age, reported as being kept in order 
by an officer of the law as they waited their turn to enter the 
houses where the sorry creatures ply their trade? In order to 
insure to herself physical health, in order to avoid the operating 
table, and in order to guarantee to her children the right to live, 
she must face these things, and the fully equipped girl will ! What 
eflfect will it have upon her wish to marry when she learns that 
in the period 1887 to 1906, there were 12,832,044 marriages in 
America, and 945,625 divorces, an increase in number per five-year 
periods of 14,973 (1872-1876) to 71,922 for 1902 to 1906. Of 
these 945,625 divorces, 316,149 were granted to the husband and 
629,476 to the wife (66.6%). The common causes of these broken 
homes were desertion and adultery. Curiously enough, of the 
divorces obtained by the husband against the wife, 28.7 per cent, 
were for adultery, and only 10 per cent, of those by the wife 
against the husband. No one doubts, however, that the vast major- 

207 



What are We to Expect? 
ity, if not nearly all divorces granted against the xx«ov^a.«vi aic, as 
a matter of fact, granted for causes of which adultery is practically 
one. The figures read differently for the following reasons : First 
of all, the woman's offense is rarely condoned; the husband often 
escapes with forgiveness ! The husband is also less likely to have 
his offense discovered. No mention is made by the Bureau of the 
Census of the infection of the wife with contagious disease as a 
cause of divorce, though both judges and lawyers have told me 
that repeated instances have come to their notice in which the 
divorce is granted on this and no other ground. Of course, venereal 
disease implies adultery on the part of the husband as its usual 
basis and origin ! The whole system of the breaking of homes 
seems to rest upon the theory that the woman is an inferior species, 
that she deserves fewer privileges and more severe penalties than 
the male, and that she is willing to be draped or shrouded in the 
hypocrisy of the male claim that he ''is placing her on a pedestal 
and trying to keep her there." What effect will it have upon the 
girl and woman to realize, not simply to know, that very few of the 
divorces mean anything short of a remarriage for both parties, and 
a further spread of moral and physical contagion? What effect 
will it have upon her to be told that in the face of all these horrid 
facts there are still loyal, true boys and men ; none too many to be 
sure, but an increasing number, and always at least a few? 

Shall I answer my own questions? I would reply, first of all, 
that the girls and women are rapidly learning the facts concerning 
the social diseases, and the manner in which they are ignored and 
spread ! I would also tell you that despite their seeming supineness 
girls and women have never been satisfied with nor proud of the 
double standard of physical and moral health for the two sexes! 
You may also rest assured that once she moves in the matter woman 
will sweep our cities clean, because there are no cowards like 
moral cravens ! The men have neither a physical nor any other 
excuse to offer when forced to the wall, and are not likely to make 
a protracted resistance! The houses of prostitution are open and 
in them women are day and night subjected to shame for the lust 
and money of the men! These women are in the main young 
girls, averaging seventeen and eighteen up to twenty years, and 
some are ready to quit the life, if enabled to live in any other than 
a hand to mouth style, or even to live at all! Few of them live 
over five years at their trade! Everyone is infected and infecting 
others with contagious disease! And as the result of intimacy 
with these sorry creatures, our 15,000,000 boys and young men are, 
in a great majority, now suffering from or in full recollection of 
their personal experience with one or both of the two contagious 
social diseases I 

Let me ask again, "What may we expect of the girl when she 
is taught early and affectionately and wisely, first regarding her 

208 



What are We to Expect? 

own sex self, and gradually concerning those things that will enable 
her to safeguard her personal health and that of her children?" 

I believe, from what I know of her, that it will be a rare 
American girl that will be found unwilling to help ! There has been 
an astonishingly small amount of feminine vindictiveness shown, in 
return for the centuries of ignorant, unnecessary, moral and physical 
slavery ! For some reason or other, girls and women still trust the 
good that remains in boys and men, and cling to the hope that man is 
still worthy of confidence and loyalty. To be sure women have not 
extended a cordial hand to their fallen sisters ! Yet I think this is 
because they have failed to realize the fact that the pressure of 
adverse social conditions has been well-nigh irresistible ! The tempt- 
ing man has never failed to find his victim already half won through 
the coveting of finer plumage, through the narrowness of the social 
room in which, day after day finds her bent and crowded, because 
of the actual need, betimes, of rest, and relaxation, and diversion, 
outdoors, away from work, and away from the thoughtless, feeling- 
less world ! Very soon an educated womankind will stoop down 
and lift up the wicked — yes, to be sure, but the wronged, resentful, 
diseased, still useful form of the sinning girl, and bringing her 
face to face with her own uncharitable sex and with the men who 
have forced her to the place where she lies, will compel them to 
give pity and put an end to the crime. 

When the girl or woman realizes that she can be well and 
strong, even according to the standard of health among boys and 
men, provided only those boys and men shall live clean lives; when 
she appreciates the fact that their disloyalty to her has doomed her, 
up to now, to semi-invalidism and oftentimes to the operating table, 
and an acquaintance with death ; then, I believe, as in many another 
instance, she will be both intelligent and magnanimous in her for- 
giveness, as well as in her determination that for the future equality 
in moral and physical matters shall be the order of the day! It is 
idle to say that womanliness and motherhood are to be sacrificed 
when women come into their own. The world has not in recent 
years known a free, unfettered, emancipated woman! 

Let us be confident that in the finality of things woman will 
stand where man has pretended to place her, at the pinacle of his 
genuine affection, admiration and respect; and that, when she has 
taken this high place, the earth's business will proceed with a new 
honesty and perhaps at a less destructive speed! Will she bring 
prostitution to an end ? Not in a moment or twinkling of an eye ! 
She can do it almost when she pleases, however! It may, indeed, 
be necessary for her to act, because weak man seemingly will not 
accomplish the task by himself. 

Will she enter into public life and usurp the functions of the 

209 



IVhat are We to Expect? 

men? I think it more than likely that she will of her own accord 
yield the business field to the men! Once give her the genuine 
co-operation of the boys and men, instead of their disdain as soon 
as she has no further charms to proffer, and womankind will forget 
her old need for distrust, and will once more attend to her high 
business of directing and upbuilding the home! Very close then 
is the association and very mutual the influence, the one upon 
another, of the everyday girl, of her supposedly well-bred brother, 
and of his friend, the prostitute, whom he or some other girl's 
brother has almost forced into her Hfe of shame! May they ever 
grow closer until the one girl really understands the other and 
weighs in a fair scale the influence of her kind upon boys and men 
in return for their damning her! May she, side by side with this, 
lay a definite plan for the fallen woman's redemption and care! 
It will require personal contact, endless thought and affection, and 
considerable self-sacrifice to accomplish the necessary end. Another 
century must not close with its most outspoken feature woman's 
degradation and sacrifice to the animal lusts of the men! This 
blotting out of a slave-past, the informed and thinking woman will 
demand for herself and her less fortunate sister as due the very 
name of woman ! 

The Outcome of a Generation of Effort. 

A Mohammedan was once asked why he came to a Christian 
church. Pushing his little son forward, the answer was, "He comes, 
so I come!" 

Centuries ago the great Lover of Children said: "A little 
child shall lead them." Twenty years from now the present genera- 
tion of boys and girls will have become the active fathers and 
mothers, and their children will be better taught and better led. 
Both sexes are working for the future, indeed, though much may 
be accomplished by a concerted effort today. In 1896, after one 
hundred years, were won the first million converts to the Christian's 
God. Twelve years only were required to gain the second million. 
The rate is fast doubling as the time is cut in half, and there v/ill 
be no end to the chain of true citizens that shall encircle and enfold 
the world. 

In the same manner, as surely as God reigns, will His com- 
mandments some day be obeyed. The current teaching and the 
university and college influences for pantheism, in its forms dualism 
and pluralism, have not tended to bring our girls and boys close 
to their Creator. But as the rod of destiny swings back and forth, 
and as year by year is tolled into the past, there cannot fail to 
appear, provided we do our duty now, a new citizenship, glorying 
in the twin foundations of faith in an all wise Father, and of devo- 

210 



What are We to Expect? 

tion to His best creation, womankind! Then, as now, shall the 
Child be, under God, the ruler of the universe! When Socrates 
was asked how he would provide and train citizens for the ideal 
state, he replied that he would "send away into the country all those 
who were over ten years old and use those that were left." 

It will call for the freedom, lightheartedness, courage and the 
genuineness of boy and girl devotion to enable the brave old world 
to breathe deep and with a mighty uplift to right the wrong of ages ! 

There is inspiration in the boy's and girl's song: 

"I would be true, for there are those who trust me ; 
I would be pure, for there are those who care ; 
I would be strong, for there is much to suffer ; 
I would be brave, for there is much to dare! 

I would be friend of all, the foe, the friendless; 

I would be giving and forget the gift; 
I would be humble, for I know my weakness ; 

I would look up, and laugh, and love, and lift!" 



2X1 



Chapter XIII 

The Social Diseases. 

In this brief chapter will be considered only two of the social 
diseases, syphilis and gonococcus infection. Their tremendous 
significance from the standpoint of sterility, premature births, and 
abortions has already been considered and can now only be touched 
upon in passing. It is my aim to present these two conditions as 
they exist in our midst, from the standpoint of a practicing phy- 
sician, not as a specialist in the treatment of venereal diseases. The 
latter sees only a small percentage of the outspoken cases and by 
the very nature of his work is deprived of the opportunity of con- 
ferring with any save the more serious cases, and those which 
have overcome the natural reluctance of the victim to consult a 
genitourinary specialist. 

With regard to chancroid, genital herpes, and pediculosis, we 
shall attempt no discussion whatsoever. Just how far the pediculus 
(louse) and the bedbug are active in the spread of syphiHs, has 
not yet been determined. I shall hope a little later on to make 
a definite study and report upon this point. It would seem more 
than likely, that, just as the body louse has been shown to be 
implicated in the spread of certain active contagions (typhus fever, 
etc.), so it will, no doubt, be convicted in due time of compHcity in 
the transmission of syphilis, which is fundamentally a blood and 
lymph infection, and most widespread among those who are also 
prone to harbor and transmit body vermin. Army and navy statistics 
are the only data obtainable, and the only accurate ones as yet in 
America. Even these leave uncovered many points that must some- 
day be studied with a view to the eradication of the social diseases. 

Syphilis. 

History and origin. We have elsewhere in this book noted the 
fact that syphilis was well known in Old Testament times. Despite 
the reports from investigators that no bodies have been found 
showing the typical changes in bones and periosteum, there are 

212 



The Social Diseases. 

many intiniations that there was a partial, though very incomplete, 
study and understanding of syphilis in the days of the Egyptians, 
Babylonians, and Assyrians. The book of Leviticus, as well as 
Proverbs 7 and 9, seem clearly to indicate that the infectious nature 
of diseases very similar to gonorrhea and syphilis was a matter of 
common understanding. Solomon's warning to the young men of 
Jewry leaves little room for doubt that he fully understood 
the physical ailments speedily consequent upon immoral congress. 
Moreover, it is easily perceived that he cites no new information, 
but that which he regards as commonplace among those who stop 
to think over consequences rather than impulses. These ailments, 
therefore, were not new in the year ICXDO B. C. More likely do 
they date back as far as man's early sexual sinning for their origin 
and spread. 

Character of the disease. Method of acquiring. Syphilis is 
an infectious systemic disease, due in all probability to the spiro- 
chaeta pallida, a tiny microscopic spiral germ. It is contagious 
in that it is transmitted easily through contact with the discharges 
from the various lesions (sores) upon the inner and outer surfaces 
of the body, nearly all of which contain the causal organism. A 
few years ago it was thought that only in the first and second 
stages were the causal forces of syphilis active. Now we are 
able to demonstrate the spirochasta pallida in the tissues of the 




The spirochaeta pallida, (Schaudinn.) 

body as long as the disease is present, and indefinitely after symp- 
toms have disappeared. Syphilis is, therefore, a disease of the 
entire body, including the blood and lymph, and may be trans- 
mitted from and by one person to another as long as the infect- 
ing organisms are in the body. Whether the disease is ever entirely 
eradicated from a person once infected must still be held an open 

213 



The Social Diseases. 

problem, with very positive advocates for both the affirmative and 
the negative sides of the question. 

Syphilis is transmitted primarily through sex intercourse, and 
because of this fact has been stamped as a venereal disease. There 
is room for grave doubt, however, whether the number of criminal 
infections actually compares in number with the innocent victims. 
When we include the vast number of inherited syphilitic conditions, 
the sterilities, the premature births and abortions, the stillbirths, the 
infant deaths (25,000 of which were reported in one year in France 
alone, due to syphiHs), the many infections from the common drink- 
ing cup, the roller towel, the pipe, cigar, and cigarette, and from 
kissing, to say nothing of the innocent wives infected in wedlock — 
we have a figure that numbers a by no means inconsiderable total. 
Figures are impossible in this country in which syphilis is still 
officially non-existent. Only in the army and navy are accurate data 
recorded, and here we find syphilis averaging sixth in frequency 
of all minor and major ailments (1,476 out of 5,861 admissions to 
the hospital, not including the dispensary cases). 

Among the people it is impossible as yet to ascertain the width 
of its spread. The citizens are just waking up to their danger and 
duty. Certain it is, however, that thousands walk the streets 
of every city who are a menace to the pubHc, who should not be 
allowed to marry, and who are almost certain, unless cured, to 
transmit to their wives and children a possibly incurable disease. 
Locomotor ataxia has been shown to be a development from 
syphilitic soil and the result of the syphilitic poison in somewhere 
between 75 and 100% of all instances. Paretic dementia (paresis) 
is a syphilitic outgrowth in (according to the varying experience of 
accredited investigators) from 90 to 100% of all cases. Many of 
the blind, crippled, deformed, paralytic, feeble-minded, insane, are 
deficient in one particular and another as the result of syphilis. 
Nearly all the aneurysms and apoplexies in the young, many of 
the late oncoming epilepsies and of the brain tumors, many instances 
of meningitis, of heart disease, of lung disease, of liver and stomach 
involvement, are syphilitic. Osier says that the annual death toll 
from active syphilis in England and Wales would be conservatively 
placed at 6,000, not inclusive of the secondary results, which are 
so often signed on the death certificate as the actual cause of 
mortality. In this wide land we can multiply the figures of England 
and Wales in the ratio of 90,000,000 to the population of these two 
little parts of the British Empire. 

Syphilis runs through a primary, a secondary, and often into a 
tertiary stage. Its course from the initial lesion (called hard 
chancre), through the stage of the fever, the swelling of the glands, 
the sore throat, the falling of the hair, to the final stage of hardened 

214 






" IS 


/ 


^' .:t 




.ia». 



Syphilitic babies. (Author's photographs.) 



The Social Diseases. 

arteries, the cheesy tumor formation (gumma), the apoplexies, 
the spinal cord changes, the paralyses, the insanities, the deaths, 
may require the passage in one instance of many years, or in 
another of a very brief time. The inherited forms of syphilis 
usually appear as secondary or tertiary stage manifestations, and 
as a rule become evident shortly after birth. They may not, how- 
ever, make themselves apparent for a considerable number of 
years, even after marriage, and then perhaps only in the form of 
spinal cord or brain degenerations, or of disease transmitted to 
progeny. Occasionally syphilis appears to run its course and to 
die out in an individual. Occasionally it seems to have been thor- 
oughly cured, and is lighted up afresh by an intercurrent infection 
such as influenza, gout, or tuberculosis, the latter of which develops 




The mucous patches of syphilis on the under lip. (Reproduced from 
Jacobi.) 

in syphilis with a frequency that is not experienced in any other 
soil. A kind Providence is guarding over this world of human 
beings and over the individual! Else were we all syphilitics! In 
every city are thousands of unrecognized, unsuspected cases of 
syphilis. Every city is busily at work infecting the towns through 
the visiting, ignorant young men! These ply back and forth, the 
unsuspecting, the criminally careless, and the negligent, between 
the safety and cleanliness of the village and the certain danger of 
immoral and physical disease of the large municipality. There is 
need of an officially-conducted, systematic study, of statistical 
observation, then of deliberate sanitary and medical attack. Syph- 

215 



The Social Diseases. 

ilophobia will accomplish only delay and harm ! A quiet, persistent 
campaign along intelligently practical lines will open the eyes of 
the people not only to their danger, but to the only certain cure by 
prevention. It has been shown that 83 to 89.70 of all public 
prostitutes carry syphilis in a latent, transmissible, but often not 
apparent form (Dreier and Meirowsky, D. M. W., 1909, XXXV, 
1698). Every physician could tell of a number of his male and 
female patients, supposedly clean and well, who harbor this disease ! 
Little babies have infected whole families! Yet the mass of the 
people are ignorant of its existence! In Philadelphia, during the 
latter half of 191 1, an epidemic of chancres (syphilitic primary 
spres) occurred in a group of young men and women who engaged 
in a kissing game following an amateur minstrel performance. All 
of the infections were traced to a chancre in the mouth of one 
young man and to six young v/omen w^hom he had kissed and 
infected in the game. One other young man contracted the disease 
in kissing one of these young women. 



Complications. 

The complications of syphilis, perhaps more than is true of any 
other disease, consist of certain of its manifestations in aggravated 
form. Arteriosclerosis is the most certain and the most viciously 
productive of all the complications of syphilis. It may show itself 
in the form of heart, brain, stomach, intestinal, liver, kidney disease, 
or in the involvement and embarrassment of any and every organ. 
Blindness may result from optic nerve disease and atrophy (wast- 
ing), inflammation of the iris or cornea may also supervene, as 
may cerebrospinal meningitis, aneurysm of the aorta, inflammation 
and crippling of the large joints, laryngitis with loss of voice, 
ulcerations of the bones (the shins, hard palate, nasal septum, etc.). 
Stanley, in July, 191 1 (British M. J.), reported several cases of 
syphilitic inflammation of the lung. 

Sequelae. 

The sequelae of syphiHs are crippling and destructive in their 
influence. They appear in the form of locomotor ataxia or paresis, 
or in the usually far milder and more amenable cerebro-spinal 
syphilis, or the local broken-down areas in the surface of 
the body, that indicate the persistent activity of the spirochseta 
pallida plus the anemia consequent upon the presence of this 
spirillum and its toxin. Mental and nervous diseases form the 
gravest late manifestations of the disease. Even in cases that 
have apparently been thoroughly treated through the prescribed 

'216 






upper — a normal brain. (Deaver.) 

Middle — a brain from a patient with paresis. (Weisenberg. ) 
Lower — a brain showing hardened (sclerotic) and brittle (calcified) 
arteries. (Deaver.) 



The Social Diseases. 

length of time (three years or more), locomotor ataxia and paresis 
supervene sufficiently often to call into question the certainty of 
cure in a given case. Clausen (Ugeskrift f. Laeger, May 2, 1912), 
has recently reported late manifestations of inherited syphilis in 
a brother and sister, apparently healthy until about 19 years of 
age. The boy suffered from disease of the tibia, and the girl 
experienced keratitis (inflammation of the cornea) and perios- 
titis of the bones of the arm. Eight hundred and eighty-five cases 
among children have recently been reported from the hospitals of 
Boston (W. P. Lucas) as studied during the past ten years. 




Patients with paretic dementia (paresis). (Original photograph.) 



Treatment. 

The first and most important step in the treatment of syphilis 
is a prompt, very early recognition of the disease. Too often the 
patient, because of ignorance or reluctance, fails to consult a phy- 
sician until valuable time has flown by. Far more often a physician 
is consulted whose lack of experience and equipment disqualifies 
him from attempting the handling of the condition. It may be 
briefly stated that the earlier the diagnosis, the more successful 
the treatment, and the more likely the cure. Not all cases of 

217 



The Social Diseases. 

syphilis can be diagnosed off hand, even with ample laboratory 
facilities at call. Therefore, not all cases can be treated promptly, 
even though they submit themselves for inspection and advice. 
Here again, however, the principle must come into play, that the 
best effort will, all things being equal, afford the best results, while 
the tardy, incomplete attempt at cure will almost certainly result in 
disaster to the primary case and to all with whom he or she comes 
in contact. 

Whatever the form of the disease three things are essential to 
recovery, granting for sake of argument that this can be secured. 
The first is a wiUingness to persist in obedience to the physician's 
orders until safety seems assured from the standpoint of medical 
experience, not from the apparent health of the patient. The second 
essential is treatment by a physician who realizes that he is manag- 
ing an individual, not one of a vast number, and regulates the 
intelligence of his measures accordingly. The third is absolute sex 
continence and abstinence from tobacco and alcohol. 

The newer forms of treatment by means of salvarsan (606) 
and neo-salvarsan seem to offer decided advantages over the old 
methods of administering mercury and the iodids alone. And yet 
at this time no positive statement can be made with regard to the 
certainty of cure. One prominent writer and student of syphilis 
(Collins, J. A. M. A., June 22, 1912), says, "Whether or not we 
are now in possession of a cure for syphilis remains to be seen. In 
our judgment it is the neurologist who must give the dependable 
answer to this question." And again, "One of the experiences that 
impressed itself most deeply in us when we first began the study 
of syphiHtic nervous diseases was that individuals who had had 
syphilis and who had been treated for it in the orthodox way, and 
during the alleged necessary period of time developed nervous 
diseases that flow out of syphiHs as early (that is as soon after 
infection) and as severely as those who had had little or no treat- 
ment." The author's experience confirms these statements in every 
particular. Their accuracy is also attested by the tendency of 
nearly all authorities on the treatment of syphilis to reinforce the 
modern treatment by salvarsan, with a simultaneous or subsequent 
course of medication along the old lines, which were admittedly 
beneficial, if not finally efficacious. There is a manifest distrust, 
even at this early date, of the new treatment, and at the same time 
a lack of confidence in the old procedures sufficient to warrant 
the eager welcome and support of any new measure. The people 
ought to know the real state of affairs clearly before risking their 
own and others' lives and happiness in contact with the sources of 
this disease. Fortunately, laboratory staining methods, microscopy, 
and new serum and blood tests (Wassermann, etc.), enable the 

3X8 



The Social Diseases. 

physician to buttress his diagnosis and to estimate the HkeHhood 
of an at least temporary cure. When municipal authorities awake 
to the need of action, they will furnish free laboratory diagnoses 
and free treatment in hospital wards, and insist on the treatment 
of every patient to the point of apparent cure. Certain of the 
cities are already reaching out toward such intelligent methods of 
procedure. These measures will strike at the origin of the disease, 
and by prevention can eventually eradicate, even in the (again 
for argument's sake only) event of an impossibility of medica- 
mental cure. Until the authorities are willing or intelligent enough 
to proclaim the dangers involved in the lack of effective treatment 
of a syphilitic subject, the people will not realize their obligation 
and will not take steps to protect themselves in the sanest, cheapest, 
most effectual way. 

Prognosis. 

If of no consequence to anyone else, the outcome of the case 
would be of vital interest to the infant and to the young marrying 




Gamma (syphilitic (umor) of the heart wall. (Robinson.) 
219 



The Social Diseases. 

pair ! Has the syphilitic a right to marry while still syphilitic ? Of 
course not ! Then, if apparently cured, will he infect his wife and 
children? Will he eventually become a charge upon them, or upon 
the city or state? In short, can he be cured, or has he syphilis 
in an outspoken or latent form for all time? 

Let it suffice to reply that the majority of writers profess to 
believe with regard to the general curability of syphilis that, in the 
majority of instances, it can be cured if properly treated and in 
time, and over a period long enough to enable the study of the 
progress of the disease under treatment to be thorough. As against 
this, Fournier, probably the greatest living authority on syphilis, 
gives the following statistics: "It is impossible to determine in 
what proportion of frequency syphilis goes on to the third stage. 
. . . At all events it is certain by experience that the third 
stage is common in both sexes and in all classes of society. . . . 
In my own practice I have observed more than five thousand cases 
of this sort. . , . After the skin, the brain is most frequently 
attacked by syphilis. ... I have records of 743 cases of brain 
syphilis observed by me during thirty-nine years. Excluding 389 
fases of VN^hich I have failed to ascertain the mode of termination, 
there remain 354 cases of which I know the outcome. Of these 
79 have been cured, 66 are dead, 209 survive with the following 
infirmities : 

Motor troubles exclusively, 
Intellectual troubles exclusively, 
Both motor and intellectual troubles. 
Epileptiform seizures, 
Deafness, blindness, impotence, etc.» 



Thus 22 per cent, were cured, and 78 per cent, are crippled in 
various ways, including the 19 per cent, of fatalities." 

In this series it should be noted that every case v/as under 
skilful care. There is an unbroken unanimity in the belief of 
medical men that syphilis untreated or carelessly treated is likely 
to persist in one form or another. 

With regard to the prognosis, as influenced by the most recent 
methods of treatment, it may be well to cite the experience and 
conclusions of Finger (Wien. klin. Wochenschr., June 6, 1912), 
recently read at the International Congress on Dermatology, by 
R. MuUer. In 144 cases of syphilis in its secondary phase, eighty- 
five patients were retained under scrutiny for many months follow- 
ing the salvarsan treatment. In most instances the Wassermann 
test gave a negative response after four to eight weeks. In more 

220 



61 


cases 


44 


cases 


72> 


cases 


^1 


cases 


6 


cases 


209 


cases 



The Social Diseases. 

than half of the cases the reaction became positive again from 
three to twelve months later. In a few instances the disease ran 
a malignant course, though the test was negative at all times. One 
patient has been treated for more than two years by every known 
method, old and new, and has not been free from evidences of 




Aneurysm of the aorta (syphilitic) in a child of four years, 
and death. (Author's case.) 



Rupture 



the disease for one week of the time, though the Wassermann test 
has been negative throughout, probably influenced by the treatment. 
In one family four children between 9 and 14 years, all infected 
by an older sister, were treated, two with mercury and two with 
salvarsan. The symptoms subsided and disappeared in all four, 
though under the salvarsan treatment the Wassermann test became 
negative, while under the mercury regime the reaction remained posi- 
tive. Two months later all four children relapsed and all the reac- 
tions were positive again. The treatment was repeated in the same 
way, and the same course was observed, with the same recurrence in 
both the mercury and salvarsan cases. In two other children 
Finger reports that two years after treating one thoroughly with 



221 



The Social Diseases. 

mercury and the other with salvarsan, the reaction is again positive 
in both. He submits his experience as warranting the conclusion 
that while salvarsan is more rapid in its action than mercury, it 
does not ensure a permanent cure. 

With regard to marriage by syphilitics, actively apparent or 
symptomatically cured, each physician must in our present stage of 
enlightenment (or the opposite) advise his patient according to 
his own conscience. The patient also has to answer for his own 
responsibility! Only the marrying girl is competent to prevent 
those who will and dare run the risk of begetting unhealthy progeny ! 
Let her beware if she would surely avoid the realization of a home 
broken through infection of the wife and child by the most dread 
of all physical diseases ! Has not then an apparently cured person 
the right to marry? I answer, these are matters that reach down 
deep into the personal privilege and responsibility of the consulting 
physician and the individual in question ! Society has not yet 
reached the point either in knowledge or in discretion that will 
warrant it in laying down rules for enforcement by law. There 
are involved, however, the foundation and the life principles of 
the home. The final answer cannot yet be given to many ques- 
tions regarding this disease, which springs from our tolerance of 
public immorality and which involves so many innocent persons 
in order to gratify the selfishness of the regardless portion of 
society. Perhaps the rightful and the only justifiable (because the 
only certainly safe) answer will never be accepted by an otherwise 
sane people! 

Gonococcus Infection. 

This does not comprise gonorrhea alone, which simply con- 
stitutes one of its manifestations. Gonococcus disease is a blood 
infection due to the introduction into the system of the gonococcus, 
a definite, easily recognized germ, of which the form is shown in 
the ilbistrations on pages 20 and 278. 

Any part of the body and any one of the internal organs may 
form the point of local attack. Its most usual form is called 
gonorrhea, in which the mucous membranes of the genitourinary 
passages, or of the eye, or even of the rectum, and the mouth, may 
be attacked. In the male the disease is in the vast majority of 
instances of venereal (immoral) origin. In the female it is, per- 
haps, fair to say that more innocent women carry the disease than 
even those of libertine habits. This is not possible of proof; it is 
simply the belief of many students of the medical phase of the 
problem. Many innocent wives, infected by their husbands, run 
the course of the disease and are never informed as to its nature 
and origin! Probably every prostitute, clandestine and public, is 
infected with gonococcus disease very shortly after, if not during 

222 



The Social Diseases. 

the first exposure! The men with whom she associates almost 
invariably harbor the gonococcus ! When they infect her she becomes 
a permanent focus for the spread of the disease, because she is 
never cured, and is constantly reinfected, even if a cure were 
likely under the circumstances ! A large percentage of our boys 
and young men are infected with gonococcus disease long before 
they have reached a marriageable age as the result of illicit inter- 
course with women previously infected by other boys or men. 
How large a percentage cannot be definitely proven! Various 
reliable authorities give figures up and down the scale from 50% 
to 90% of all under thirty years of age, as carrying gonorrhea at 
some time between the ages of fifteen and wedlock. Few physicians 
of experience among young men and boys admit the likelihood of 
a percentage lower than 50 being even approximately accurate. 
Their only means of arriving at an estimate is a study of their 
private case records, most of which convict the male sex of an 
indulgence in libertinism and venereal disease far in excess of 
that indicated by the lower percentage figure. I have already stated 
that in one of the large university colonies a census was taken 
of the students, and more than half admitted frankly having had 
illicit sex intercourse prior to that time. Gonorrhea and sex license 
are twin sisters, and are seldom found apart. In one of the largest 
of the eastern hospitals the private wards v/ere found to give a 
percentage of acknowledged venereal infections only less high than 
that of the colored public ward patients ! Gonorrhea is not a respec- 
ter of persons ! Public women and clandestine prostitutes carry the 
infection, oftentimes in a latent form. Yet in certain parts of Europe, 
and in at least one city within an hour's ride of Philadelphia, are 
given a physician's certificate of freedom from disease, in spite of 
the fact that the presence of the gonococcus in the body is easily 
demonstrable by the modern tests of the body fluids. 

Gonococcus infection is important in the male mainly from 
the standpoint of the infection of thousands of innocent wives 
years after the husband has apparently been rid of the last signs 
of disease. A second primary significance may be found in the 
infection of the eyes of children at birth by these mothers and the 
consignment of many to permanent blindness and to institutional 
care. A third influence of the gonococcus that might easily attract 
the attention of an otherwise intelligent people is the constantly 
increasing tendency to sterility in both sexes. No other factor 
exerts a causal influence to compare with that of this ubiquitous 
disease. 

In the female gonococcus infection has the distinction of 
causing a large percentage of the abdominal operations upon and 
nearly all of the pelvic suppurations (abscesses) in women. Many 

223 



The Social Diseases. 

cases of child-bed fever are instances of gonococcus disease. When 
it has spread upward to the uterus and tubes it is practically incur- 
able, unless by an unsexing major operation. 

It is within the bounds of accuracy to say that only a very 
few of the great number of innocent women infected are finally 
cured of the effects of gonococcus disease. 

There is no contagion so widespread. There is no other that 
exacts such a toll in terms of blind children, sterile men and 




Gonorrheal endocarditis (heart disease). The heart of a nurse dying 
from a gonococcus infection, contracted from a patient. 
' (Author's photograph.) 

women, abortions, crippled joints, infected bladders and kidneys, 
and in the long roll of surgical diseases of women. Its mortality 
is not to be ignored, and results, when at all, from a fulminant, 
malignant septicemia (blood poisoning), and a general involve- 
ment of the serous lining of the heart and of its valves. Every 
year records a certain number of such deaths in every hospital 
experience. (Vid. above.) 



224 



The Social Diseases. 

Nature of the Disease. 

The most frequent form of gonococcus infection is a urethritis, 
a suppurative inflammation of the urinary passages from the bladder 
outward. Its average course is first briefly mild, then very painful 
and severe, and is finally terminated by a slow gradual cessation 
of symptoms. These are the local signs. The patient may be 
severely poisoned, or may show little evidence of the blood infec- 
tion. Through intelligent treatment the male patient may be and 
often is rid of all symptoms within an average duration period of 
six weeks. Very often the condition proves obstinate and months 
are required. Occasional cases seem to defy cure. Between 25 
and 50% of all cases reach the physician only after they have been 
in the hands of quacks, w^hose gross overcharges and ignorant 
neglect have consigned many a useful citizen to permanent crippling 
and incompetency, and many to the need of surgical measures in 
the hope of cure. Very many cases are not treated at all. Probably 
the majority of cases of gonorrhea, for one reason or another, fail 
of treatment to the point of real cure. The best evidence of the 
truth of this surmise rests in the high percentage of surgical 
operations in innocent women which the surgeons attribute to the 
consequences of gonococcus infection, transmitted from the 
supposedly cured male. 

History and Origin. 

There is reason to think that gonococcus infection was known 
to the urancients. We have not an inkling as to its origin. Today 
it is the most widespread of all contagious diseases and in one 
form and another its influence may fairly be said to enter nearly 
every civilized home. As a venereal infection we have already 
called attention to the fact that it usually takes the form of a 
urethral inflammation, but that in all of its forms it is actually 
a blood infection. A growing appreciation of its influence in the 
causation of joint and tendon involvements, of inflammations of 
the heart, the lungs, and other organs, has made possible a clear 
understanding of the systemic nature of the disease. Up to very 
recently it was regarded as of trifling significance, and there are 
many physicians who remember within recent years being taught 
as students that in order to be able to treat the disease, one must 
have experienced it at first hand. We are now entering upon a 
new period of history in which gonococcus disease and syphilis 
are being placed where they belong, among the virulent contagions, 
and among the few which are likely to seriously affect the health 
of posterity, if not its very existence. 

22s 



The Social Diseases. 

Means of Acquiring and Transmission. 

It need not be restated that the main source of gonococcus disease 
is to be found in infection through ilHcit sex intercourse between 
men and boys on the one hand, and the pubHc and clandestine 
prostitute on the other. It is carried thence into clean homes by 
the boys and men who frequent the women whom other boys and 
men have infected. No one, except the physician who comes into 
contact with the working class of young women through his prac- 
tice among them or through hospital experience, can appreciate the 
vast number of department-store girls, factory and mill girls, office 
workers, and servants, who allow the sex intimacy of men and 
boys, and as a consequence suffer first from the acute venereal 
infections, usually gonorrhea, and then from more or less perma- 
nent ailments, because they seldom are willing to acknowledge 
infection and obtain the advantage of thorough treatment. Thus 
they develop and suffer from the chronic and latent forms of the 
disease. 

The circle is completed by the infection of an ever new army 
of maturing boys and men, which like the annually new legion 
of young women is being brought into contact with the danger and 
its consequences. 

The blind asylums are full of children whose eyes are darkened 
forever owing to the infection of the mother, perhaps before 
marriage, but far more often as the result of ignorant infection 
in wedlock by a husband who has almost forgotten his early disease. 
Pregnancy and childbirth have a decided tendency to light up 
and render virulent latent gonococcus infections in a woman. Just 
at the time in which the danger to the child is greatest the baby 
is born ! 

Infection with gonococcus disease from soiled clothing, espe- 
cially from bed linen and towels, is by no means rare. Again those 
that suffer are usually children. There are few children's hospitals 
free for long at a time from epidemics of gonorrhea among little 
girls, usually acquired from a parent at home, and soon running 
like wildfire among the children of the ward. Sometimes child 
infections are acquired through actual or attempted sex intercourse 
with them by adults, many of the lower class of men believing that 
contact with a virgin child will rid them of disease. Only a few 
days ago a little girl of nine years came to my notice, carried into 
an empty house by a male brute, violated and infected with gono- 
coccus disease. This man was discharged from custody because 
the little child could not clearly identify him, though two other 
girls recognized him definitely as the man who had carried this 
child almost from her cradle. Promiscuous sex intercourse among 

aa6 






Blind boys and girls under institutional care. Twenty per cent, of 
such are blind owino- to gonococcus disease of the mother 
transmitted at birth to the child. 



The Social Diseases. 

very young children is by no means unheard of, and is not a rare 
occurrence in the tenement house population. As an indication 
of the frequency of infection of children by one method and 
another, we may find interest in the recent investigations of Dr. 
W. P. Lucas, of Boston, who easily found the records of 885 
cases of congenital syphilis among the hospital children of that city 
during the past ten years, as compared with 1,384 cases of gonor- 
rhea. Of course, both sets of figures represent only a suggestion 
of the actual number of cases that occurred. 

Infections with gonococcus disease from water closets, while 
indeed possible, should not be given very cordial credence when 
presented as explanations of their predicament by boys and men. 
They are so unlikely and so undeserving of confidence that their 
possibility is merely mentioned at this time. 

Complications. 

The complications of gonococcus infection are in the main 
localizations of its attack upon given organs or parts of the body. 
Thus the large joints may be crippled by an acute gonococcic 
inflammation. Many of these infected joints result in permanent 
disability and deformity, and a very few get well. The eye may 
be and often is involved in a wild, purulent inflammation in which 
many eyes are lost, as the blind asylums testify. One of 
the nurses in a hospital upon which I am in attendance lost an 
eye from gonococcic infection while on duty in the eye ward. In 
spite of careful instruction and supposedly scrupulous care she 
carried some of the gonococci from the patient to her own eye, 
probably on her finger. Nearly, if not quite all cases of gonor- 
rheal ophthalmia in the adult are direct infections similar to this. 
Another quite frequent, and in the male very important complica- 
tion, is the infection and swelling and consequent closing of the 
little passage tube from the testicle to the seminal storage vesicles. 
This tube is the epididymus, and the condition is termed epididy- 
mitis. (Vid. pp.124 .) If the closure is permanent, as it frequently 
is, and if it occurs on both the right and left sides, the hoy or man 
becomes sterile, and is incapable of giving life to children by a wife 
and mother. Only an operation will relieve the sterility, and even it 
may not be successful. 

Still another distressing occurrence is the very common con- 
traction of the urethra (urinary passage) in the form of a stricture, 
which often results in serious bladder and kidney obstruction, 
infection, and organic disease. In the girl or woman a spreading 
upward of the infection is the usual course of affairs, and means 
first an inilammation of the uterus (womb), and shortly after the 

227 



The Social Diseases. 

involvement of the Fallopian tubes and not infrequently of the 
ovaries. (Vid. pp.102 .) Soon or late this results, as a rule, in an 
abscess, a serious operation, and the sterility of the ivoman. The 
tube in the woman corresponds to the epididymus in the man. 
Oftentimes she is rendered sterile even in the absence of an 
operation, the inflammatory process shutting off the passage way of 
the ovum through the tube as completely as if it were removed from 
the body altogether. A less frequent, but almost always fatal com- 
plication, is malignant valvular heart disease, which, as already 
stated, may form a part of a general gonococcic septicemia or blood 
poisoning. Of all the serious outcomes of the disease, this promises 
the least likelihood of help from any direction save through a 
miracle of Providence. Dieulafoy has recently reported (Bull, de 
la Med., May i8, 1909), such a case in which pneumonia also 
developed, and gonococci were obtained from the sputum. This 
case and another somewhat similar both recovered, but on their 
discharge from the hospital both still contained gonococci in their 
blood as shown by repeated cultures. 

Treatment. 

The treatment of gonococcus disease, if thorough and prompt, 
often results in cure. We must acknowledge this on the basis of 
the many healthy wives of formerly infected husbands. No phy- 
sician can in advance promise a cure. No one can absolutely 
promise a cure even after all symptoms have disappeared and the 
final laboratory tests have been made. The many infected wives 
prove this point. Moreover, very many cases prove obstinate, many 
more get restive and impatient and neglect the necessary measures, 
a great number go untreated or suffer from mistreatment that had 
better have been replaced by none. Certain of the latent infec- 
tions, some even of the chronic forms of the disease, have yielded 
to a recently discovered serum treatment. On the whole, however, 
gonococcus infection is the same unsatisfactory, treacherous, resist- 
ant problem that it has always been. The general septicemic form 
is just as fatal as was the first case. There never has been found 
and probably never will be found either a certain or thoroughly 
satisfactory remedy, and we are far from knowing a cure. Both 
gonococcus disease and syphilis seem destined to serve as the well- 
deserved recoil of immorality upon the offender. The physician 
simply places the patient as far as possible at rest, and teaches 
him or her to assist Nature in her attempt to effect a cure. If at 
the end of two or three months the doctor can honestly discharge 
his patient with, as far as ascertainable, a clean bill of health, both 
are to be congratulated, and both should be w^armly thankful. 



The Social Diseases. 

What of the Boy? 

Mention, and bare mention, should be made here of the prophylactic 
treatment now being employed in the United States Army and 
Navy subsequent to immoral exposure. By means of medicaments 
placed in the hands of the men off duty and on shore leave with a 
view to their use immediately following immoral exposure to con- 
tagion, the number of infections from syphilis and gonorrhea have 
been reduced to a somewhat smaller number than heretofore. The 
results show, however, that there is no effective preventive known, 
and that no prophylactic whatsoever will be used when the men are 
under the influence of liquor. On every ground I question the 
wisdom and advantage of the procedure, especially from the stand- 
point of honor among men. Certainly our boys should not be 
taught means and methods of breaking the moral and human law 
with as little danger as possible to themselves. Almost were it 
better for them to suffer and in due time to awake to a realization 
of the infamy of their own debasement and that of even the poorest 
and sorriest of womankind. Only in a straightforward manner will 
the world advance to a sense of rightful self-esteem, surely not 
by taking it for granted that the young manhood of this or any 
other fair land is committed to the prostitution of his own honor 
and that of some mother's daughter. Give the boy the sex educa- 
tion he lacks and give it early enough to be of use by being on the 
ground and at work before his mind and heart are filled with 
vicious and vulgar half-knowledge, and there will be no need of 
teaching him how to safeguard himself in the midst of his wilful 
dishonor. 

Prognosis. 

The prospect ahead is even more important in the matter of 
gonococcus disease than in the case of syphilis. For every one 
that suffers from syphilis, there are probably four or five that have 
or have had gonococcus infection. Of the two diseases it is difficult 
to say which is the more serious. Moreover, the significance of 
the cure is not simply that of freedom from discomfort and pain. 
Far more vital is the relation of the infected boy or man to his 
future wife and the relation of the wife's health, if he infects her, 
to her child's future. 

Probably, as with syphilis, there is a doubt as to whether the 
physician has the moral right to promise anyone suffering from 
gonococcus disease a cure. He can with justice say that the patient 
will probably get well. He will find it still more difficult to advise 
him with regard to marriage. Bacteriologic tests of the semen and 
urine and serum tests of the blood are imperative. Even when 
these are repeatedly negative, a long time should elapse before 
marriage is even considered. It would seem as though after all 
care had been exercised, an honest man would feel that he owed 

229 



The Social Diseases. 

it to his prospective wife to tell her of the risk she runs in marry- 
ing him, and thus to let her choose between that risk and not 
marrying him. If it be necessary to say, when symptoms have all 
subsided, either "You are free" or "You are not free from danger 
to yourself and others," the physician had far better err on the 
safe side, or preserve silence. Fairer still would it be to all persons 
concerned to explain fully and freely to the public now and 
unceasingly the nature and course of the disease, and pray that 
God may guide future generations of boys and girls through this 
moral night into a day in which the social diseases have no further 
terrors for the human race, because its men are no longer double 
dealers, and its women are held as the nation's pride, instead of 
being subjected to a bondage of moral and physical invalidism that 
is even more a pity than a shame. 



«30 



Chapter XIV. 

The Eradication of the Social Diseases in Large Cities. 

No more time need be spent in discussing the possibility or the 
impossibility of eradicating the contagious social diseases, syphilis 
and gonococcus infection, than in relating their ubiquity or their 
influence on all classes of society. Suffice it to say that rich and 
poor, intelligent and stupid, moral, immoral and unmoral, innocent 
and guilty, are paying the price of centuries of an ignorant, ill- 
considered false modesty in terms of morbidity and mortality that 
probably surpass the sum of all other contagious influences com- 
bined. If a computation were made of the acute venereal infec- 
tions, their complications and active sequelae, the brain and cord 
lesions, the insanities and idiocies, the inherited and acquired 
deformities and destructive lesions, the partially and totally blind, 
the abortions and stillbirths, the operations on the abdomens of 
innocent as well as of guilty women, the male and female sterility, 
the army of infant deaths, the apoplexies, the lowered vitalities of 
those not manifestly diseased, the moral bias and weakness, and 
the degeneracies of mind and heart directly or indirectly traceable 
to the so-called social diseases, there would result a seriousness 
and perhaps a tendency to reflection throughout humankind that 
would forecast a profound upheaval. 

The physical results form only the beginning of the influence 
of the social diseases on the world at large. The broken homes, 
the divorces, the desertions, the suicides, the incapacity for work, 
the wages lost, the hospitals and asylums rendered necessary, the 
cost of treatment, form only a few of the points at which the 
diseases of immorality impinge on both the innocent and the guilty 
portions of society. It seems incredible that up to the present 
syphilis and gonococcus infection are, officially speaking, non-exist- 
ent, and that as far as the national and to a great extent the 
municipal authorities are concerned are deserving only of contempt 
or complete disregard. In the army and the navy alone are they 
officially recognized by the national government as diseases. The 
horde of immigrants that enter this country every year is examined 
for every infection save these two. The accurate and actual cause 
is placed on the death-certificate, the country over, in every instance 
save of these two diseases. 

«3i 



Eradication of the Social Diseases. 

There is before us, therefore, a task to which society at large, 
and especially the medical portion of it, must straightway address 
itself. The fact that the problem ramifies in and out through 
animal passion and private and public immorality renders it more 
difficult, to be sure, but none the less insistent, and none the less 
finally soluble. Small-pox once appeared hopelessly and perma- 
nently beyond control ; tuberculosis was only recently regarded with 
complacent resignation. The social diseases await the same sharp 
awakening of a people that have been too long asleep, and the 
application of measures that are within our grasp in spite of all 
pessimism to the contrary. 

An Educated Public. 

In the first place, and absolutely essential to the success of any 
attempt at controlling influences so insidious as the diseases that 
are fostered mainly by and through immorality, is the sane, quiet, 
complete sex-education of the American people. Granted not only 
a knowledge but a realization, a thorough appreciation of the facts, 
and radical action will follow, on the part of womankind at least, 
and eventually from the side of the traditionally less virtuous male 
portion of society. On a health basis only, in my opinion, is the 
social evil a soluble problem. In a competent knowledge of the 
existing conditions of the public health lies the first and most 
radical advance toward society's moral and physical cure. Beginning 
with the teaching of normal sex hygiene to little children at the 
mother's knee, through the medium of the flowers, and soon through 
the lower and then the higher forms of animal life — always 
emphasizing the sacred duty and privilege of reproducing one's 
kind, and of equipping the body and mind far in advance for this 
duty — ^beginning with this primitive, but essential ground-teaching, 
we can advance through the pubhc and private school to the later 
sociologic training of the adult citizen. Not only trained teachers 
are needed, but intelligently willing parents. We are at least one 
generation distant from the apparent realization of society's physical 
and moral cure. 

Competent and Willing Officials. 

An intelligent, open-eyed people will elect to positions of 
responsibility and trust only such men and women as are committed 
to the moral and physical health of the pubHc. One of the new 
requirements of eligibility for mayor of a city will be a candidate's 
thorough acquaintance with the bearing of prostitution on the 
physical health of the community. He will be required to make in 
advance an outspoken statement of his attitude toward a continued 

232 





Syphilitic liver, kidney and spleen. All are enlarged, scarred, and 
nodular. The surfaces should be smooth. (Author's photographs.) 



Eradication of the Social Diseases. 

tolerance of the spread of the social diseases through publicly 
condoned immorality, — a tolerance that is rendered possible only 
by the violation of his oath of office in ignoring and failing to 
enforce existing laws. As a rule these are competent to meet the 
needs and to insure the protection of the public. Clandestine 
prostitution furnishes a problem even far more serious than that 
of public immorality and one that does not come within the respon- 
sibility of a city's chief executive. This fact relieves him in no 
measure from a full and far-reaching responsibility for every 
public brothel that remains open and inviting to the boys and men 
contrary to law, or for every case of venereal disease carried from 
such a house into clean homes to infect innocent, ignorant women 
and children. In my own as in almost every other city the brothels 
have long stood open wide. In them a large percentage of our 
boys and men contract and transmit one or both of the two con- 
tagious social diseases. This is in the face of the fact that mayor 
after mayor has sworn to uphold laws already on the statute books, 
and only awaiting official willingness to enforce them. These 
provide for: 

1. The quarantining by the Board of Health of "any person 
afflicted with any contagious disease dangerous to the community" 
and for the exercising of "such other powers as shall in their 
judgment be most conducive to the public good with the least 
private injury." 

2. Enforced hospital treatment if a person afflicted with any 
contagious or pestilential disease cannot be properly and sufficiently 
attended at home. 

3. The reporting by physicians to the Board of Health of 
patients "laboring under a pestilential contagious disease, every 
person practicing physic in the city shall forthwith make a report in 
writing to the health office, and for neglecting to do so he shall be 
considered guilty of a misdemeanor and subject to a fine not 
exceeding $50." 

4. The right to enter and search where there is "just cause 
to suspect any nuisance to exist." 

5. The punishment (a) of those keeping a disorderly house; 
(b) of those keeping a bawdy house or leasing a house to be so 
kept; (c) of those committing adultery; (d) of those committing 
fornication. 

The enforcement of each and every one of these laws will 
be necessary to the control of the diseases that spring originally 
from immorality. 

233 



Eradication of the Social Disease. 

With the co-operation of fearless and intelligently equipped 
heads of the departments of Public Health and of Public Safety, 
no mayor of either a small or a large city need expect failure as 
the outcome of a determined and persistent attempt to keep his 
city clean. Clean morals imply clean physical health to a tremend- 
ous extent, and in so far as the law empowers him, both the clean 
physical health and clean moral health of the community depend 
in the main on the willingness of the chief executive to fulfil the 
obligations he has pledged himself to perform. There can be no 
apology for awaiting a demand on the part of the people for 
protection against dangers w^hich they neither appreciate nor under- 
stand. Their safety is a sacred trust devolving on the conscience 
and intelligence of the chief executive of every city and one that 
does not lessen in its insistence because the people are still asleep. 
An unsullied personal character, a keen intelligence, initiative, cour- 
age, persistence, and patience are prime qualifications and require- 
ments to be exacted of future candidates for the occupancy of a 
mayor's chair. May the American people soon awaken to their 
opportunity and to their need! 

What Can the Public Do? 

The active co-operation of the people with their chosen offi- 
cials is the ideal method and will no doubt bring the speediest and 
most thorough result. The people and the officials are not both 
essential to the success of an intelligently conscientious endeavor! 
Either can awaken the other, if slumbering, to a sense of duty 
and inherent power! Either can accomplish much, if necessary, 
without the aid of the other! In certain of our American cities 
the immoral and diseased sections have been rendered temporarily 
clean through the efforts of one man or of the entire body of 
citizens, in the face of a reluctant mayor and an openly opposing 
Department of Police. In such an event the public may have to 
seek out the facts for itself. It should, if necessary, deliberately 
investigate its own improvident expenditure of public funds for 
the care of those physically incompetent through tolerated public 
immorality. It should not be called on to assume the func- 
tions of the mayor and his subordinates; but in the delinquency 
of these officials it may and should take their functions over. The 
public officials are salaried to protect the public by the enforcement 
of law. On occasion the public is forced to work and to serve 
without pay. Publicly condoned prostitution means publicly con- 
doned disease and a consequent civic burden in the form of taxes 
for the maintenance and care of the feeble-minded, epileptic, 
orphaned, crippled, and paralyzed. It would almost seem that the 

«S4 



Eradication of the Social Diseases. 

medical portion of the public would feel it incumbent on itself to 
render these data easy for the people to obtain. It should encour- 
age a full public understanding of the dependence of these condi- 
tions in large measure on immorality and consequent disease. 

In default of action by their chosen officials the people should 
not repeat the mistake of placing unwilling men in places of power. 
The women of a community should demand also that the double 
standard of physical and moral health be distinctly condemned by 
the male sex, if marriage and child-bearing are to be continued by 
innocent, clean girls. Motherhod should not entail invalidism, the 
operating table and an unsexing operation soon after the first child 
is born. What is more, womankind should see to it that the single 
standard is adhered to, at least by those men who desire to marry 
clean girls. No laws are needed for the purpose. Let the mother, 
or better still the marrying girl, ofifer her prospective husband a 
physician's certificate of her own freedom, as far as ascertainable, 
from transmissible disease, and demand the same from him! His 
answer will of itself go far toward assuring her of safety or danger. 
In this step the miracle is already well on its way toward accom- 
plishment, the women and children are in sight of physical safety, 
and the babies far nearer an enjoyment of their right and title to 
be born alive and to live ! 

Measures to be Avoided. 

The public should also study and acquaint itself with the facts 
regarding measures that have invariably invited and just as invari- 
ably resulted in failure. These may be considered under three 
heads: (i) Indisposition, ignorance, inaction; (2) reglementation, 
including medical examination, and segregation; (3) vice commis- 
sions. 

Inaction has been the order of the day for centuries, and has 
centered in male duplicity and willingness to tolerate feminine 
ignorance and even encourage blind over-confidence in the worthi- 
ness of the stronger and less temperate sex. Most cities owe their 
sorry moral and physical plight to the fact that they are contented 
in their corruption in spite of knowing that it is only a short step 
to civic revolution and to the security of a new and real health. 

Reglementation, Medical Examination and Segregation have 
all been put to a thorough test in Europe and in certain sections 
of this country. In Germany, France, Austria and England, gov- 
ernment commissions have reported not only on their inefficacy, but 
very positively with respect to their influence in increasing the 
spread of prostitution and the social diseases. No more ample, 
no more definite evidence can be presented to an intelligent people 
than has been adduced on this point. Nothing further should be 

a35 



Eradication of the Social Diseases. 

necessary by way of determining the action of a wide-awake nation. 
We should not require the stroke of a mallet on our collective 
figurative head. Neither should we encourage a further waste of 
time and money over methods and means that have once and again 
been tried and found wanting. Grand juries will be heard, perhaps 
for years to come, demanding a licensing of prostitution (virtual 
if not actual) that implies the licensing also of the spread of con- 
tagious disease. The people will not indefinitely tolerate such an 
inane and extravagant recklessness and folly. They cost too dear 
in terms of good American lives and health. This nation can afford 
to lead the way in any and every effort that promises to insure the 
safety of her citizens. It must never venture to walk blindfolded 
or backward into pits and over precipices that have long since been 
marked with sign-boards by other nations. 

Vice Commissions. — I venture to suggest that these are at best 
a sorry attempt on the part of public officials, from the mayor of a 
city down, to shift a grave personal responsibility and duty on a 
long-suffering people. Two memorable vice commissions have 
made the necessary pioneer investigations and have blazed the way. 
The fact that they were necessary in their respective cities was a 
burning disgrace on the executive officers of those communities 
and on the male sex at large. None the less their work was well 
done, and their reports have startled all the world except the 
portions that are still asleep or that do not wish to be shaken out 
of ignorance and depravity. Vice commissions of the future should 
have for their sole function, not the cleansing of the physical and 
moral furniture of a city, but the ridding of a community of offi- 
cials who fail to keep it clean by the enforcement of laws which 
they have sworn to execute and uphold. Cities differ very little 
with respect to their immoral and diseased sections. Invariably 
there is a close association between rotten politics and public prosti- 
tution. Without a thorough interdependence of these twin evils 
neither one could continue to exist, because the concealment and 
misrepresentation that are necessary to the life of the latter would 
become apparent to the clean portion of the public and action would 
be prompt and radical. 

There can be no question that the people, especially the women, 
do not yet realize the significance of the present state of affairs. 
From east to west the only variation is in the extent and degree 
of publicly tolerated, if not encouraged, prostitution. If the Depart- 
ments of Health and of Public Safety in a given city are alive to 
their opportunity and duty, they have in hand all the data that are 
necessary to the cleansing of their own particular charge. Every 
house of public prostitution and every house of assignation can 
be and usually is accurately known and registered in the Police 

236 





On the left — sections from a normal spinal cord. No degeneration of 

posterior columns. (Author's photograph.) 

On the right; — sections from the spinal cord of a patient with locomotor 

ataxia. ' Note the destroyed (white) posterior areas. (Starr.) 



Eradication of the Social Diseases. 

Department. The object of this registration varies in the different 
communities. In not a few it is with the definite purpose in view 
of levying a toll for revenue that quietly reaches the pockets of 
individuals in a position to provide protection and immunity, and 
still more quietly supports a certain type of machine politics that 
needs no description, because we all know it well. Every public 
prostitute and street-walker ought to be accurately known to the 
police officials. Her exit from a particular city is not a matter of 
difficulty when this end is desired. A definite notice that she is to 
cease plying her trade, with the realization that the notice requires 
attention and observance, is all that is necessary. Nor need she 
return until the authorities desire or permit her reappearance. 
When all cities take this matter in hand there will be none that will 
harbor an acknowledged public woman or house of ill fame, nor 
one that will permit the presence of soliciting men and women — 
usually foci of contagious disease — on its streets. 

There are indeed difficult phases and perplexing features of 
the prostitution question, but the matter of a full knowledge of 
the number and identity of the public houses and of their inmates 
and of the street-walkers, and ridding the cities of all these, are 
not among those difficulties. An official suggestion that they are 
constitutes an insult to the intelligence of the people, and amounts 
to a self-conviction of unfitness for executive office. Moreover, 
we may rest assured that a vice commission, from today on, will 
from the time of its appointment until its dissolution meet with 
unnatural conditions in the city which it undertakes to investigate. 
In most instances a vice commission must necessarily employ 
improper and immoral means to obtain the evidence that will con- 
vict. When it does not, it assigns to an impossible task a police 
or detective force that is usually as well known to the public prosti- 
tute as the latter is to them. Perhaps as in the Philadelphia journals 
of yesterday and today the personnel, even the names of the officers 
assigned to detective duty, are spread out to public, and of course 
to prostitute view. Every item of the work of a vice commission 
can and should be accomplished more thoroughly, quietly, and 
quickly by an efficient police department serving under a loyal 
mayor and director of public safety than by a group of citizens, 
however willing, but altogether ignorant of the first principles of 
such an investigation as is placed in their charge. The facts are 
in most instances already in hand ; the moral courage to use them 
is alone lacking. 

Official and Departmental Investigation and Control. — ^These 
are the forces that must be invoked and applied sanely, persistently 
and without ceasing. The moment they are relaxed, human passion 
and carelessness of inevitable results will answer for the return of 

•37 



Eradication of the Social Diseasa, 

moral and physical conditions that are all too apparently serious 
today. In my opinion no city need harbor either the public prosti- 
tute or his 6r her contagious disease, provided it begin now and 
continue electing only such public officers as both subscribe to 
solemn oaths and fulfill their obligations to the public and to 
humanity. 

The public should square itself with the public prostitute and 
acknowledge that in a large measure it is responsible for her sorry 
state. Social conditions are tolerated and encouraged by many of 
saintly speech and mien that render it easy if not imperative that 
the public woman yield to the temptations of passion, vanity, and 
man's disregard of woman's honor and fair name. Starvation 
wages, the unattractiveness and poverty of the home, the oppor- 
tunity of an easy income far larger than that obtainable in an honest 
or honorable livelihood, a total ignorance of the inevitably early 
disease and death that attend this calling, the dance-hall, the average 
theatrical show, the wiles of the procurer and cadet, the long 
working-hours, the temptation and finery of the department store, 
the lack of legitimate pleasure and relaxation, are the conditions that 
help, at least, in recruiting the ranks of the 500,000 and more of 
America's public women, the average length of whose prostitute 
life is little over five years. The public owes the prostitute some- 
thing of sympathy, protection, encouragement and of hospital 
care, at least when she emerges from her low level to an attempt 
at better things. Her head should not be pushed down again; she 
should not be refused employment; she should not be raided or 
imprisoned unless the same treatment is accorded the man. She 
ought to be taken into God's fresh air under institutional protection 
and directing care, under ideal conditions, until she can breathe 
deep and realize that there are human beings still on the earth who 
have also erred in one or another direction and who are extending 
to her a helping hand. She has not violated her oath of office as 
have the mayor and his subordinates who have perhaps allowed her 
to become morally and physically infected and as a prostitute to 
spread contagious disease, nor has she yielded in most instances 
altogether to her own desire. Grim social conditions have often- 
times pressed her down until her weak will has given way in an 
attempt to reach the only apparent means of relief and escape from 
intolerable servitude or impending starvation. 

Another mistake that is likely to be made is the overlooking 
by the citizens of the entire absence and lack of hospital provision 
for the army of girls and women and boys and men whom any 
wholesale moral upheaval will throw suddenly on the community. 
In the state of Pennsylvania there is only one hospital that freely 
admits for treatment persons suffering from the social diseases as 

238 



Eradication of the Social Diseases. 

such. Without ample hospital facilities and wards in which to 
furnish treatment free of charge to all willing to apply, the control 
of the diseases consequent on prostitution is impossible, and the 
attempt need not be undertaken with any hope of accomplishment. 
Such extravagances as the recently proposed placarding of the 
houses of those infected with the social diseases are ill-advised 
conceptions of those who are acquainted with neither the social 
nor the strictly medical difficulties in the way. Victims of syphilis 
or a gonococcus infection must be encouraged to attempt as speedy 
and complete a cure as possible, not driven to concealment and 
the inevitable spread of disease. An exaggerated fear of public 
exposure means simply and surely an endless chain of infections 
that will cease only when the social diseases are placed as they 
should be, in the light of day, beside and in the same category with 
similar contagions, such as small-pox, typhoid fever and tubercu- 
losis, not one of which compares either in morbidity or indirect 
mortality with syphilis, or perhaps with gonococcus disease. 

Salutary Sanitary Measures. 

There are practical measures that are likely to contribute 
toward final success in the partial or ultimately complete eradica- 
tion of the social diseases. One of the most important of these is 
the placing of syphilis and gonococcus disease on the list of the 
compulsory reportable contagions. California enforces such a pro- 
vision to manifest advantage. Even New York City provides for a 
limited reporting of these conditions. In no instance is the name 
of the patient reported to the health authorities; simply the fact 
(by number) that a new case is in the care of the physician, a brief 
statement of the character of the infection, its origin when possible, 
and the adequacy of its supervision and care from the standpoint 
of the public. 

Another strictly official health measure should be the provision 
for a careful and accurate study of the social diseases. Such an 
investigation must needs be carried on by the authorities to be 
complete or of any practical value. It could be rendered suc- 
cessful by the use of a questionnaire placed in the hands of every 
physician in a given municipality. 

Side by side with adequate free treatment for syphilis and 
gonococcus infection should be offered unrestricted opportunities 
for obtaining a Wassermann test for syphilis, a serum test for 
gonococcus infection, or a laboratory examination of specimens and 
slides for the spirochceta pallida and for gonococci. Quarantine: 
regulations can and should be imposed on patients who refuse proper 
treatment and thereby endanger the public health. 

239 



Eradication of the Social Diseases 

State control hardly seems practicable at the present time, 
though both the state and national authorities' should officially 
recognize the social diseases as grave problems from the standpoint 
of morbidity and of indirect mortality. Especially in their bearing 
on mortality among infants and children should they be listed as 
hereditary contagions, and accurate statistics be sought after. It 
may be possible within the near future to spread on the statute 
books laws similar to those already enacted in several of our 
western states providing for the requirement of a certificate of 
health prior to the issuance of a license to marry. Such a law 
would at best be merely an educational power. It cannot be 
enforced except in so far as the individual physician is conscientious 
and has an eye single to public duty. This end can be accomplished 
in even fuller measure by the people themselves when they are of a 
mind to establish the custom of exacting just such a certificate in 
the absence of a law covering the point. 

Another invaluable measure must be the furnishing by every 
city of all its hospitals with private and free wards for the decent 
and skilful treatment of syphilis and gonococcus disease. This has 
already been referred to as absolutely necessary to success. 

Another measure might well be the systematic education of 
all those who probably carry infection, especially of the public 
prostitute, so long as she is an acknowledged member of a com- 
munity, with respect to her own invariable infectiousness to the 
public, not only to the men with whom she cohabits, but through 
them and also independently of them to other and innocent 
individuals. 

Still another would be the posting in the front hall of every 
building, respectable and otherwise, of the name and address of 
the owner of the property. If held in the name of a corporation 
or estate the name of the latter should be displayed. In Iowa an 
injunction can be obtained against the keeper of a house of prosti- 
tution, as well as against the owner of the property. A fine of 
$3(X) may be imposed by the court against the property, constitut- 
ing a tax lien which takes precedence over a mortgage and serves 
as a cloud on the title. The property is enjoined forever from 
use for immoral purposes and for one year from use for any 
purpose whatsoever, except under certain specified conditions. 

A fifth would be the formation of definite organizations whose 
sole aim would be the securing of ample living wages for girls and 
women for services actually rendered. This step would be an 
active preventive measure against public prostitution, and still more 
powerful in the control of the even more serious problem of clan- 
destine immorality which serves as the most active means of 
spreading the social diseases among the needy working girls, and 

240 



Eradication of the Social Diseases. 

through them to boys and men. 

Sixth, the cities can and should maintain a real home, an 
outdoor institutional guardianship, not in the nature of a penal 
institution, for wayward girls who need and desire a guiding and 
directing hand back into physical and moral health. 

Definite provision should be made for the protection of the 
public against infected and infectious cooks and table servers (hotel, 
restaurant, and lunch-counter waiters), colored and white; also for a 
full medical certification as to the freedom of certain classes of 
household servants, especially of nursery maids and butlers, from 
transmissible disease. One of the largest railroad systems in the 
country is of its own volition already insisting on a regular periodic 
physical examination by the company's medical officer of its entire 
restaurant station and train force on pain of prompt dismissal in 
the event of refusal to submit to the inspection. For identical reasons 
the public drinking-cup, the roller towel, and the public piece of 
soap, should be forbidden by law. The cities can and should 
furnish properly managed outdoor gymnasiums, baths, dance-halls 
and playgrounds, not only for its children but for its young adult 
men and women. From both of these uncared for classes come the 
substitutes that fill the ever-depleting ranks of the diseased and 
dying prostitute. 

There remains to be thought out and worked into practical 
form some plan by which industrial openings and healthy business 
opportunities may be furnished to such girls and women as evidence 
a genuine desire to leave either clandestine or public prostitution 
for useful citizenship. Whether in the form of a large co-operative 
departm.ent industry, or in that of an agensy that will quietly but 
effectively secure from philanthropic business men of the cities 
positions for regenerate girls of a given community — in whatever 
form the solution may shape itself, some definite future must be 
provided or the former unfortunate must remain, through society's 
heartless decree, a ppt-manent sinner. Society will pay the prire in 
terms of broken and diseased home life. 

Finally, it would not be an impossible thing for the women 
of a city effectually to demonstrate to the men that since prostitu- 
tion is no longer looked on as a physical necessity for either sex, it 
must no longer be indulged in by the loyal citizen. A prompt 
handling of all attempts to entice and solicit on the part of men ; 
the public exposure and summary punishment of all males and 
females detected practicing any form of prostitution; the oversight 
of the moral and physical welfare of its boys and girls, at least to 
the extent of safeguarding and preventing them from easy contact 
with prostitution and from exposure to the social diseases in public 
houses of ill fame — lie within the power of the large cities and 

241 



Eradication of the Social Diseases. 

afford opportunities that should not be overlooked of prevention 
as by all odds the best and cheapest form of cure. The women and 
the physicians of a community really have the solution of the pros- 
titution problem within their grasp and control. Both prostitution 
and the social diseases will begin to disappear the moment the 
women and the physicians so decree. With power comes the 
responsibility of noblesse oblige. With the new opportunity comes 
also a shame born of oft-repeated unwillingness and refusal. Only 
through educated, brave men and women and through the intelli- 
gent action of him whom we still love to call the family doctor, 
will that new body of citizens be reared who will know all the facts, 
and regard prostitution and its diseases as burning life-problems, 
and who will not stop short of a radical cure of evils for the contin- 
uance of which through their inaction they have been in a 
considerable measure responsible. 



'242 



XV. 

Appendix 



The great majority of these Educational Charts, originally 
prepared by the Author, were revised by him for and used in the 
Exhibit of the American Federation for Sex Hygiene in the 
International Congress on Hygiene and Demography, Wash- 
ington, D. C, 1912. 



243 



Educational Charts. 



a 



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■4-' flj _ 

S -^ tj nJ 






c o > 






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o «» S 



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Educational Charts, 






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J45 



Educational Charts, 



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neurasthenic, 

habitue, 

inheritance 








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246 



Educational Charts. 



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247 



Educational Charts. 



Heredity Chart 
Alcohol 

Case reported by the Author 
"ABC" 

Father Mother 

Drinks eonstantly, beer and whiskey, Uses no alcohol, 

often to excess healthy, strong womaa. 

Son Daughter 

Chronic valvular heart disease, Hysteria major with convulsions. 
Varicose veins of the legs, coma (unconsciousness), 

Suppurative appendicitis, and temporary paralysis. 

Pneumonia. 



24^ 



Educational Charts. 



•3 



<•§ 






3 3 3 ^ C/» 

03 1— I— > T 

— (T> ^ P 

• a. 

CO f6 

3 



5 ? 3'S. 

3*3 0.3-^^0 
£. -t 3 

S J£.^2 3^ ^ 



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a» V- rl- CD 



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rt (T> 
3 

ST K 

^1 



ST 

3 






249 



Educational Charts, 







'e 

husband 
ilock. 

Fourth chil 




Wil 

Infected by 

in we( 

d (boy) Third child (girl) 






i8 years — 
-e marriage. 

thorough 
lent. 

Second chil 




H. I 

Syphilitic at 
10 years befoi 
• Underwent 
treatn 

First child (boy) 




■ 



'O {J ^ 



c <u 

I- 

o 



i2 «« o 
oin « 



be ex 



a.so 



Educational Charts. 



3* 3 5. 5 ■ 



D3 



rt 3 



nil; 

O w> J" 
3 *- 









a 

a 

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3 
S 

3 

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9 



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"2*3*3* 

P CO "^ 

cr 



251 



Educational Charts. 



The Method of Teaching Sex Hygiene. 

Agencies. 

/. The Home. The parent is the most natural and the ideal 
teacher. The home is the happiest and the best school. 

//. The Elementary School. There should be an outdoor, and 
an indoor study of the life history of plants and animals in graded 
observation lessons. A course in personal hygiene will follow, 
culminating in the grammar school, with the main facts regarding 
normal sex hygiene, taught to boys and girls separately, and by 
specially equipped teachers. 

///. The High Schools. The reproduction of plants and ani- 
mals as an integral part of biology may during this period be sup- 
plemented by a few special talks on sex functions, always by expert 
teachers. These courses should be given separately to the boys and 
to the girls. 

IV. The Normal Schools and Colleges. Well-rounded courses 
of applied biology and hygiene will now be in order, also the 
outlines of pedagogic methods applicable to elementary and high 
schools. 

V. Other Agencies for Teaching. Special lectures by experts 
to boys and girls in Y. M. C. A., Y. W. C. A., Sunday-school 
Weekday Associations, church societies, in the Boy's Brigade, 
the Boy Scouts, and similar associations. 

Special lectures on young men's and young women's problems 
in variously organized associations. 

Special conferences of parents' home and school associations 
with regard to the problems of the sex education of children. 

Special lectures and literature for boys and young men, and 
for girls and young women who are not properly or are not at 
all instructed by parents or in the schools. Carefully chosen books 
adapted for parents and teachers. 



d52 



Educational Charts. 



\ The Method of Teaching Sex Hygiene. 

Infancy. 

(Ages 1-6 Years.) 

This is the priceless period of early parental influence. 

Attention must be paid to food (quantity and quality), to 
hygiene of the bowel, and to the clothing. The latter should not 
irritate the external sex organs. 

Scrupulous attention to cleanliness, especially of the external 
sex organs of the child. 

Circumcision of the male infant, when necessary. 

Extreme care is necessary in the choice and instruction of the 
nurse. Too many ignorantly and some designedly handle the sex 
organs of the infant to induce quiet. 

Careful supervision of the hygiene of the house, adequate 
sleeping conditions, fresh air, etc. 

Alertness to recognize symptoms of abnormal sex excitement in 
the child. 

Prevention of bad habits through very early, affectionate teach- 
ing along lines suggested by the development of the individual child. 

An early, very simple explanation of the origin of life by the 
mother, who should answer the child's questions as explicitly and 
fully as is compatible with its stage of mental development. 



353 



Educational Charts. 

The Method of Teaching Sex Hygiene. 

Childhood. 

(Ages 6-12 years.) 

Oral Instruction Only! 
Plants: 

L Nature Study — 

(a) Life springs only from life. The cycle of plant life. 

(b) The function of the pollen and the seed, of the roots, 

of the leaves, of the flower. 

(c) Fertilization. 

(d) The scattering of the seeds. 
Animals : 

(a) Birds, origin from the egg and the spermatozoon. 

(b) Frogs, origin from the egg and the spermatozoon. 

(c) Metamorphosis of the frog and of other animals. 

(d) Fertilization of the egg, and development of the barn- 

yard animals. 
II. Personal Hygiene — 

Simple facts concerning food, clothing, cleanliness, exer- 
cise, and play, habits of retiring and rising, fresh 
air. 

III. Parental attention to the child's social relations and the 
possibility of contamination therefrom. 

(a) In school. 

(b) In the neighborhood. 

(c) Through improper moving picture shows and other 

forms of entertainment. 

(There is a vital necessity of retaining the confidence of 
the child, if the latter is to permit and help the 
parent in studying these influences and condi- 
tions). 
IV. 

(i) Judicious private talks by parent or teacher concern- 
ing bad sex habits which may be manifested by 
the individual child. 

(2) The child's sex questions must be accurately answered. 

V. Parental oversight and direction of the child's reading and 
companionships. No sex literature is suitable 
for the child during this period. 



254 



Educational Charts. 



The Method of Teaching Sex Hygiene. < 

Early Adolescence. 
(Ages 12-16 years.) 

I. Nature Study and Biology — 

1. Further study of reproduction in plants. 

2. Reproduction in the lower forms of animal life. 

(a) Species in which the care of the young is absent. 

(b) Those in which love and care of the offspring is 

evident. 

(c) Significance of parental love in animal life. 

(d) The mating of animals and its relation to the care 

of the young. 

(e) The higher the animal in the scale of life, the greater 

helplessness at birth, and the more love and care 
needed. 

(f) The human baby the most dependent of all animals, 

needing the greatest love and the longest 
period of parental protection and care. 

11. Adolescent Loyalty and Love — 

(a) Its influence, if properly directed and controlled, can- 

not fail of good. 

(b) It should be studied as portrayed in the works of 

great literary artists in poetry and the novel. 

(c) The feeling of chivalry and of honor and respect for 

women is to be zealously cultivated. Biographies 
of great women and of knightly great men should 
be read by boys and girls. 

(d) Emphasis must be laid upon the responsibility of 

brothers and sisters for one another's welfare, 
also upon the boy's obligation to protect other 
boys' sisters. 

(e) Expressions of adolescent sex love in the form of 

enthusiasms for art, for altruistic social activ- 
ities, for favorite intellectual pursuits, are to be 
encouraged along common-sense lines. 



25s 



Educational Charts. 



The Method of Teaching Sex Hygiene. 1 

Early Adolescence (continued). 
(Ages 12-16 years.) 

III. Personal Hygiene — 

Hygiene and care of the reproductive organs. 
The sex functions as sacred obligations. 
(i) The relation of self-control to the health of the indi- 
vidual and of his or her offspring. 

(2) The danger of abuse of the sex functions, and the 

results upon the nervous system, including the 
brain and spinal cord. 

(3) The importance of properly regulated food, of exer- 

cise and play, of physical fatigue (not exhaus- 
tion), of mental occupation, of early rising, of 
cold bathing, of sleeping in a cold room, as means 
of control of sex feelings. 

(4) The influence of drugs (alcohol, tobacco, opium, 

cocain) upon loss of sex control. 

(5) The significance of sex in human life, in the light of 

plant and animal development, as already studied. 

IV. Amusements. 

( 1 ) A careful choice of social pleasures and their environ- 

ment is essential to moral health. 

(2) The wholesome meeting of boys and girls is the only 

safe preliminary basis for mature friendships and 
marriages. 

(3) Suggestive shows, books, and posters, also the saloons 

and dance halls go far toward nullifying slipshod 
and careless home efforts. 



256 



Educational Charts. 



The Method of Teaching Sex Hygiene. 

Later Adolescence. 

(Ages 16-25 years.) 

I. Biology — 

(i) A further study of the science of reproduction and 
its application to human life. Human embry- 
ology and heredity. 

(2) Animal breeding and its influence in the production 

of superior qualities in the animals. 

(3) Human inheritance and its bearing on family histories. 

(a) The inevitable result of the marriage of 

defectives. 

(b) The inevitable result of the marriage of 

the most fit. 

n. Sex Hygiene — 

(i) The relation of individual chastity to the moral and 

physical health of the individual and of his or 

her unborn child. 
(2) The social diseases: Their nature, contagiousness, 

far-reaching effects, and their danger to the 

innocent. 

in. Sociology — 

The ultimate relation and interdependence of unfair social 
relations, of the double standard of moral and 
physical health for the two sexes, of prostitution, 
and of the diseases consequent upon immorality. 



257 



Educational Charts. 



The Method of Teaching Sex Hygiene. 

Period of Parenthood. 

Through an intelligent use of the family physician as the 
natural instructor of the home in sex matters. The responsibility 
will ennoble him and furnish a new sanity and health to home 
happiness and morals. 

Through sane literature on the subject of sex hygiene, meaning 
by this term the healthy and reverent use of the sex functions, 
with a view to the future welfare of the individual and of his or 
her posterity. 

Through schools yet to be established, for the deliberate, intelli- 
gent training of parents and school-teachers. 

Through traveling exhibits, such as are possible through the 
instrumentality of the State Societies of Social Hygiene, or of the 
American Federation for Sex Hygiene. 

Through lectures by physicians and by others fitted by nature 
and by training to teach. 

Through deliberate measures on the part of the heretofore 
negligent municipal and Federal authorities to awaken a slumber- 
ing people to the imminence of the danger, and the means of 
prevention and cure. 

Through a realization of the fact that the sex function is a 
sacred trust, not a plaything, — a talent for reverent use by loyal 
pitizens, not a means to the undermining of the health and Hfe 
of the people. 



258 



Educational Charts. 



HOW AMERICANS SPEND THEIR MONEY. 

Immoralitj^ and the social diseases (estimated) $3,000,000,000* 

Intoxicating liquors 2,000,000,000 

Tobacco 1,000,000,000, 

Jewelry and plate 800,000,000 

Automobiles 500,000,000 

Church work at home 250,000,000 

Confectionery 200,000,000 

Soft drinks 120,000,000 

Teaand coffee 100,000,000 

Millinery 90,000,000 

Patent Medicines 80,000,000 

Chewing Gum 13,000,000 

Foreign Missions 12,000,000 



*Estimated on the basis of 500,000 public prostitutes and 1,000,000 clandestine 
prostitutes. No estimate is included covering the care of the sick, blind, insane, 
paralytic, or the expense of infant funerals. For the basis of this estimate see 
pages 14 and 15. 



^59 



Educational Charts. 

Social Conditions Influencing the Spread of Prostitution and the 
Venereal Diseases. 

Always and in every instance of prostitution it may be assumed 
that a clean girl has been assisted, if not started, on the road to 
ruin by an unscrupulous or deliberately bad man. 

Prostitution, notwithstanding all that is said to the contrary, 
is an organized business. It could not live except by the deliberate 
barter of the bodies and souls of women. 

"So unwilHng are women to debase themselves that the cadet, 
the dance hall, the Raines law hotel, false marriages, drink, and 
even force, are necessary to keep the hideous thing flourishing." — 
Gen. Theodore A. Bingham, ex-Police Commissioner of New York 
City. 

Tobacco and alcohol have very often if not usually been the 
means of inciting the boy and girl to practices that were known to 
be unfair, and then to the complete lowering of the standards of 
honor and virtue. 

The most powerful influence fostering prostitution has been 
the vicious and unwarranted teaching that the physical health of the 
male demands a different standard of moral and physical virtue 
from that of the female. As the result of living this He for centur- 
ies, men have brought women to a state of chronic invalidism and 
to a social level that is Httle above that of servants to a sensual 
male appetite. 

Unattractive, injudicious home surroundings, lack of parental 
comradeship, poverty, the need to toil for small return — these things 
have driven many a girl from an unintelligent, but respectable home 
into the lap of prostitution. 

The love of finery and dress, the opportunity of ready money 
at apparently little expenditure of time and effort, the first excite- 
ment of the dissolute life, these together with home restrictions 
often fretfully applied, form the first causes of the lapse from 
the clean to the immoral life. Probably the temptations furnished 
by the display in department stores, the dance halls, the cafes, and 
the theatres, are equally to blame with the utter loneliness and 
fatigue of the average working girl. 

The professional male and female cadet can be found every- 
where. In the garb of fashion and elegance, even in that of the 
minister or deaconess, he and she have been seen on the 
lookout for young girls in the station, in the trains, in the stores, 
at the steamboat landings, even in the country towns. Fifty thou- 
sand new, young girls are induced every year to enter the ranks of 
the prostitutes in America to fill the places of those who have died. 

i6o 



Educational Charts. 



II 



s 



mMH 



RELATIVE NUMBER 
or CASES 1810 

ADMISSIONS SCALE aOO TO IINOH 



o^&^ias5|§g^8§ 



VENEREAL DISEASES 



17745 



TONSILLITIS 



6451 



BRONCHITIS 



/ACUTE AUO\ 

K. cHRomo y 



3555 



INFLUENZA 



3^87 



DIARRHEA 



R806 



NOMeFFEeilVE SCALE 10 TO I INCH 



ML»<^(nO— J OOco o ~ Jot^ l^Tn 



VENEREAL DISEASES 



TUBERCULOSIS 



ML 



333 



TONSILLITIS 



RHEUMATISM (articular) 



103 



BRONCHITIS 



fACOTE ANO^ 
V CHROmC-^ 



m 



M 



ADMISSIONS SCALE 300 TO I INCH 




VENEREAL DiSFASgS = 



DEN6UE 



MALARIAL FEVERS 



FURUNCLE 'S-PHLE6M0N 



DIARRHEA ClNCL-emeRiTi^ 



NONEfFECTIVE 


SCALE I5T0I INCH 






o en o <n § 2^ 




VENERREAL DISEASES 


1 


g|.l5 


DYSENTERY 


1 


a.99 


MALARIAL FEVERS 


1 


Z'ltZ 


DENGUE 


1 


aao 


DIARRHEA OMa-ENTERiTis) 


3 


1.17 


Tabi 


LEI 





a6i 



Educational Charts, 



INCREASE OF VENEREAL DISEASES IN THE U. S. ARMY, 18S0-1911. 
ADMISSIONS— TOTAL VENEREAL RATES PER 1000 OF MEAN 
STRENGTH, REGULAR TROOPS. 

Year Troops in the U. S. Troops in Philip- Total Army Figurhs 

PINES 



1880 


97 






1881 


92 






1882 


78 






1883 


77 






1884 


75 






1885 


80 






1886 


72 






1887 


74 






1888 


80 






1889 


85 






1890 


75 






1891 


72 






1892 


77 






1893 


73 






1894 


80 






1895 


74 






1896 


78 






1897 


85 






1898 


81 






1899 


138* 


156 


146 


1900 


155 


139 


159 


1901 


150t 


154 


157 


1902 


161 


156 


161 


1903 


136 


175 


151 


1904 


148 


297 


188 


1905 


157 


306 


200 


1906 


144 


310 


190 


1907 


149 


311 


197 


1908 


155 


290 


194 


1909 


151 


302 


197 


1910 


138 


276 


175 


1911 


145 




163 



•Feb. 1, 1899. Establishment of Canteen. Rate increased from 81 to 138 per 
1000 mean strength. 

fFeb. 2, 1901. Sale of beer in Canteen abolished. Rate of incidence lower in U. S. 
than in preceding year, and has continued lower, notwithstanding an armj 
now twice as large. 



.262 



Educational Charts. 




263 



Educational Charts. 



Increase of Venereal Disease in the U. S. Navy 







1880 to 1909 








1 


Mean strength 
Navy and 
Marine Corps 
{Medical Returns ( 


4> y 

2 § 
111 

3 ^ 


5, 
11 

IJ 
< 


IS 


iJ 

a 




1880 


9003 


50.09 


212 


72 


735 


81.64 


1881 


9546 


42.21 


213 


108 


724 


75.85 


1882 


9371 


52.28 


216 


113 


819 


87.40 


1883 


9197 


36.96 


252 


93 


685 


74.48 


1884 


9959 


33.13 


298 


171 


799 


80.23 


1885 


9191 


30.35 


370 


181 


830 


90.31 


1886 


9188 


30.35 


389 


201 


869 


94.58 


1887 


9618 


25.36 


396 


167 


807 


83.90 


1888 


9955 


29.63 


348 


228 


872 


87.59 


1889 


11219 


27.63 


316 


118 


744 


66.32 


1890 


11768 


21.75 


286 


152 


694 


58.97 


1891 


11501 


17.21 


284 


100 


582 


50.60 


1892 


11775 


14.77 


329 


111 


614 


52.14 


1893 


12109 


14.12 


304 


60 


535 


44.18 


1894 


12520 


21.72 


501 


208 


981 


78.36 


1895 


12671 


18.86 


330 


152 


721 


58.48 


1896 


13768 


17.35 


303 


131 


673 


47.43 


1897 


15229 


17.72 


323 


136 


729 


47; 87 


1898 


23038 


16.66 


503 


190 


1076 


46.71 


1899 


20113 


20.18 


517 


226 


1149 


57.13 


1900 


22977 


20.23 


525 


214 


1204 


52.40 


1901 


26101 


20.91 


617 


217 


1380 


52.87 


1902 


30249 


20.03 


771 


284 


1661 


54.91 


1903 


36536 


22.30 


1032 


396 


2244 


61.42 


1904 


39450 


22.30 


1512 


542 


2934 


74.04 


1905 


39620 


24.75 


2085 


538 


3604 


91.38 


1906 


41690 


27.51 


2640 


733 


4520 


108.42 


1907 


44083 


19.98 


2274 


554 


3709 


84.14 


1908 


50984 


19.63 


3015 


665 


4681 


91.81 


1909 


55550 


26.57 


5861 


1573 


8910 


160.40 



264 



Educational Charts. 



INCIDENCE OF VENEREAL DISEASE IN CIVIL LIFE.* 

Illustrated by the Causes of Rejection of Recruits in the U. S. A. 

Year OF 1911 

Venereal diseases (1) 511 

Heart disease (2) 448 

Disease of the ear, including defects of hearing (3) 392 

Diseases of the eye, including defects of vision (4) 343 

Flat feet (5) 252 

Total 1946 

Year of 1910 

Heart disease (1) 277 

Venereal diseases (2) 271 

Diseases of the eye, including defects of vision (3) 199 

Diseases of the ear, including defects of hearing (4) 190 

Flat feet (5) 96 

Total 1033 

Year of 1909 

Venereal diseases (1) 333 

Heart disease (2) 321 

Diseases of the ear, including defects of hearing (3) 291 

AlcohoUsm (4) 271 

Diseases of the eye, including defects of vision (5) 262 

Total 1478 

Year of 1908 

Diseases of the eye, including defects of vision (1) 723 

Venereal diseases (2) 714 

Diseases of the ear, including defects of hearing (3) 617 

Heart disease (4) 589 

Flat feet (5) 388 



Total 3031 

Year of 1907 

Diseases of the eye, including defects of vision (1) 455 

Diseases of the ear, including defects of hearing (2) 328 

Venereal diseases (3) 259 

Heart Disease (4) 255 

Alcoholism , (5) 235 

Total 1532 

These figures cover only the cases that escaped the Une officers at the re- 
cruiting stations in the various cities. They form, therefore, only a portion of the 
rejections for venereal disease, and are all the more significant for this reason. 



* 



Educational Charts. 



INCIDENCE OF VENEREAL DISEASE IN CIVIL LIFE.* 
ILLUSTRATED IN THE RECRUITS REJECTED BY MEDICAL OFFI- 
CERS IN THE U. S. ARMY. 
1907-1911. 



Years 



Total 
Enlisted 



Rejected for Total Rejected 

Venereal Diseases 



1907 
1908 
1909 
1910 
1911 



19225 
42420 
31911 
18580 
38041 



259 
714 
333 
271 
511 



3110 
7434 
3356 
2378 
4576 



Total 



150177 



2088 



20854 



♦These figures cover only the cases that escaped the line oflficers at the recniiting 
stations in the various cities. They form, therefore, only a portion of the reject- 
ions for venereal disease, and are all the more significant for this reason. 



^ 



Educational Charts. 



Illegitimate Parenthood, Abortions, Miscarriages, Sterility. 

There are few prostitutes, whether clandestine or public, who 
have not conceived, and either given birth to an illegitimate child, 
or destroyed the product of conception. 

About 10,000 stillbirths are reported annually in the State of 
Pennsylvania alone. A rough estimate would fix the annual total 
of stillbirths for the entire country at 100,000. This figure when 
increased by the number of abortions and miscarriages, intentional 
and accidental, would perhaps aggregate 250,000 or 300,000 as a 
conservative estimate. The percentage of these preventable deaths 
due to syphilis and gonococcus disease is very large, and may easily 
account for the majority of deaths before and shortly after birth. 

A large number of both the male and female victims of syphilis 
and gonococcus disease become actually or virtually sterile. In 
syphilis this is due mainly to the tendency of the disease to kill 
the fetus before birth. In gonococcus infection it is owing to an 
inflammatory closure and destruction of the reproductive passages. 

It is estimated by conservative authorities that at least 50 per 
cent, of all the sterility in the male and female originates in the 
gonorrhea of young men, transmitted later on, and when supposedly 
cured, to innocent, clean wives. 



267 



Educational Charts. 



Alcohol — Relation to Prostitution and Venereal Disease, 

Many young men and boys engage in immoral sex intercourse 
for the first time when under the influence (not drunk) of liquor. 
Very frequently the first exposure is the occasion for infection with 
venereal disease. 

Perhaps the majority of young women and girls who permit sex 
intercourse take the first step when under the influence of alcoholic 
liquors. Very frequently a single such exposure means to them 
pregnancy or venereal infection. 

Alcohol and public prostitution are inseparable, twin phases 
of the same business, the ruining of homes. The one cannot exist 
without the other. When the use of alcoholic drinks is prevented 
in houses of ill fame, the latter close up and move to another 
locality. 

It is significant that the year 1899, which marked the establish- 
ment of the canteen in the U. S. Army, also signified a jump in the 
annual number of venereal infections from 81 per 1,000 (mean 
strength) to 138 per 1,000; while the year of the abolition of beer 
from the canteen (1901) showed a lowering of the rate from 155 
of the year before to 150 per 1,000. It has averaged from that 
time to 191 1, notwithstanding an army of over twice the size, 
about 148 per 1,000. 

The confirmed alcoholic person is almost certain to be erratic 
morally, and may be assumed to have been exposed to and to have 
contracted venereal disease. There seems to be little doubt that 
both alcohol and tobacco increase the tendency of syphilitics to 
develop locomotor ataxia and paresis. There are very few, if any, 
cases on record in which a syphilitic has developed either of these 
two afflictions in the absence of a history involving the use of 
alcohol and tobacco. 



2^ 



Educational Charts. 



Relation of Tobacco to Immorality and Its Inevitable Diseases. 

Tobacco stupefies the moral sense. — Dr. Ahernethy, England. 

No man can use tobacco without detriment to body, mind, and 
soul. — Dr. Willard Parker. 

I have been in the juvenile court ten years, and I do not know 
of any one habit that is more responsible for the trouble of these 
boys than the vile cigarette habit. — Judge Ben. B. Lindsay, Colorado. 

The tendency to both drunkenness and licentiousness is so 
obvious that this alone would seem sufficient to banish it (tobacco) 
forever from all decent society, were there not another solitary 
charge to be brought against it. — Dr. W. A. Alcott. 

Of all the harm done by the use of tobacco, the greatest harm 
and mightiest wrong is that of transmitting to the unborn the appetite 
for the filthy, disease-creating, misery-engendering drug. — Dr, John 
Cowan. 

Tobacco is a stimulus to the generative system, but the stimu- 
lating effect is followed by its depressing action; consequently, it 
has long been known, when used inadvertently, to extinguish the 
sexual appetite and annihilate the reproductive faculty. — Dr. Solly. 

Tobacco is a spendthrift, a tempter into evil associations, into 
gambling, alcoholism, and immorality, with a power and persistence 
exerted by no other influence, save the devil. 

The tobacco trade is the only traffic apart from that of alcohol, 
the stage, and open immorality, that uses indecency and vulgarity in 
picture and advertisement to increase its gain. 

With alcohol, tobacco is the keenest of all drug stimulants of 
sex passion. I base this statement upon my experience during a 
number of years as University physician among 5,000 young men 
in the University of Pennsylvania. — Dr. Robert N. Willson. 



7^ 



Educational Charts. 



Clandestine Prostitution, 

For every public prostitute plying her trade on the street or 
in a brothel, there are several so-called clandestine prostitutes 
who during the day are living an outwardly respectable and busy 
life, and spend the leisure hours in seeking illicit gain. 

The army of clandestine female prostitutes is made up to a 
great extent of the girls and young women who work for a small 
weekly, often a bare living wage. There is also a surprising number 
of young girls from fourteen years upward practicing illicit inter- 
course with young boys and men in return for small favors and 
attentions, for entertainment at the cafes and theatres, for articles 
of clothing and finery, and soon or late for money. The early 
meeting ground is the home parlor, the parks, sometimes private 
houses of assignation, the hotels, even the cabs on the street. 

The department store, the factory and mill, the offices, even 
the schools, supply the ranks of clandestine prostitution. The male 
and female cadet are ever on the watch for their prey. 

It is a fact well recognized among physicians that from the 
multitude of clandestinely immoral girls come the majority of 
infections of boys and men with syphilis and gonococcus disease. 
Very few if any escape infection by some boy or man, and few 
girls are willing to acknowledge or be treated for these diseases. 
Many do not realize their infection until they have consigned many 
boys and men to their own fate. 

The twin drugs, tobacco and alcohol, furnish stepping-stones 
to the majority of instances of male and female prostitution. 

Probably very few if any of the girls and young women who 
enter the life, first of clandestine immorahty and later of public 
prostitution, could be induced to take the first step downward if 
taught during childhood the fearful risk of disease, illegitimate 
motherhood, even of death, that lurks behind the improper advances 
of the boy, and the immoral approaches of his elder self a little 
later on. 



270 



Educational Charts. 



The Male Prostitute. 

Definition: Any man or boy who deliberately prostitutes a 
girl's or woman's honor and fair name as the result of his own 
lack of chivalry and self-control. 

The usual form of male prostitute is a school or college boy, a 
good fellow, an occasional drinker, always a tobacco user, often a 
gay rake, a "sower of wild oats." He may also be found with 
great frequency in the store, the factory, and mill, and among the 
street gamins. He may be of any age or social standing. 

The great majority of men and boys might with full propriety 
be divided into a clandestine and a public prostitute class. A few 
conduct their immorality in a manner supposedly unbeknown, 
even to their male associates. The great number conceal their 
libertinism only from their immediate families. This does not 
mean that there cannot be found very many clean and honorable 
men ! It does mean that they must be sought out ! 

The vast majority of boy and man prostitutes enter upon 
immoral practices along the highways of tobacco and alcohol, the 
two keenest of all drug stimulants of sex passion and destroyers 
of sex control. The stable, the street, many boarding schools, the 
saloon, are all adjuvants and allies of prostitution as it beckons 
and entices the average American boy. 

One vicious form of the male prostitute is the professional 
cadet. Hundreds of these parasites frequent the highways and 
byways of our cities and towns. Their business is to supply for 
a definite money return, young girls to the houses of prostitution. 
They use promises of employment, false promises of marriage, 
even real marriage if necessary, and many similar devices to secure 
their victims. Without their aid public prostitution could not 
exist. 

Another degraded form of the male prostitute is the so-called 
"pimp," who lives from and on the earnings of the immoral lives 
of girls and women. He is always a moral degenerate, also an 
idler of the criminal class, but always a keen business character. 

All male prostitutes, rich and poor, of good intellect or of the 
degenerate type, are sooner or later infected with syphilis or 
gonococcus disease or both. 



271 



Educational Charts. 



The Negro, Prostitution and Venereal Disease. 

There are about io,ooo,ocxD negroes in the United States. 
Eighty-seven thousand of these are in Philadelphia alone. 

Hospital experience enters at some time into the life of the 
vast majority of city negroes. Hospital records show that prac- 
tically all of these hospital negroes admit free indulgence in pro- 
miscuous illicit sex intercourse and consequent infection with 
venereal disease. 

It is the rare exception in hospital experience for a male 
negro to fail to admit having been infected with both syphilis and 
gonorrhea. These occurrences are with him almost a matter of 
course. Almost never is treatment carried to the point of cure. 

The result of the general infection of the city male negro, as 
seen in the hospital, is the almost equally widespread syphilization 
of the female population. The great majority of city negro girls 
have been violated long before maturity, and very few have escaped 
infection with both syphilis and gonococcus disease. 

The gravest problem to be faced in dealing with the city 
negro is not his or her industrial future or right to social equality 
with the white man and woman. It is the danger to the public of 
his or her contagiousness and infectiousness from the standpoint 
of physical and moral disease. 

Illicit intercourse between the negro and the white is taking 
place to an extent that is hardly believable until the question is 
deliberately studied. It has been estimated that one-third of the 
American negroes have an admixture of blood. A scrutiny of the 
features and the color of the negroes that walk the city streets forces 
home the conviction that nearly all carry the blood of the white 
race. 

There would seen* to be little doubt that the explanation of 
the high tuberculosis mortality and the virtual incurability of 
tuberculosis in the negro are to be found in his widespread infection 
with syphilis, which serves as a ready soil for the second disease. 
Syphilis breaks down the physical defences of the victim, and 
doubles the viciousness of the tubercle bacillus' attack. 



272 



I 



Prostitution Laws: Compiled by the American 
Vigilance Association 



STATES 



WHITE SLAVERY LAWS LAWS ON KEEPING DISORDERLY AGES OF 

No Law Poor Law Fair Law Good Law HOUSES. CONSENT 



Alabama 


Poor Law 




Alaska 


No Law 

Poor Law 




Arizona 
Arkansas 


1901 
Poor Law 

1894 




California 






Colorado 
Connecticut 




Fair Law 

(1911) 


Delaware 






District of 
Columbia 

Florida 


Poor Law 
(1911) 


Fair Law 
(1910 



Georgia 



Statute merely declares keeper a vagrant Fourteen 

Statute forbids setting up or keeping Sixteen 

houseof ill fame 
Keeping of disorderly house forbidden 

Leasing forbidden in certain limits Seventeen 



Statute gives cities power to suppress. No 
state law forbidding such houses 



No Law 



Hawaii 
Idaho 


Fair Law 

(1905) 


Illinois 




Indiana 




Iowa 


Fair Law 
(1909) 


Kansas 


No Law 


Kentucky 


Poor Law 

(1893) 


Louisiana 




Maine 


No Law 


Maryland 


Fair Law 

(1910) 


Massachusetts 





Good LawStatute forbids keeping and leasing. 
(1911) 

Statute punishes keeper of such house. 

Good LawStatute forbid keeping such houses. 

(1911) 

Statute forbids keeping and leasing such 
Good Law houses. 

(1911) 

No statute on subject. 

Statute names penalty for keeping. Lease 
voidable after conviction of tenant. 



Statutes forbid keeping such houses. 



Statute forbids keeping and leasing. 
Owner may terminate lease upon no- 
tice. 
Good LawStatute forbids keeping such houses. 
(1911) 

Statutes forbid keeping houses of prosti- 
Good Law tution, licensing houses of prostitution 
(1908) and keeping boats, etc. for prostitution. 



Sixteen 

Sixteen 

Eighteen 

Sixteen 

Seven 

Sixteen 

Ten 

Statutes in 
this State set 
no definite 
age, Cases 
say ten. 

Ten 

Eighteen 

Sixteen 

Sixteen 

Fifteen 



Good LawStatute forbids keeping or leasing. 
(1911) 

Statute forbids keeping or leasing. Lease 

voidable upon conviction of tenant. 
^Citizens may enjoin owner and keeper, 

etc. (See note). 
Statute forbids setting up or keeping such 

houses, statute punishes one who know- Eighteen 

ingly leases such houses. 
No statute on subject. Sixteen 



Good LawStatute forbids keeping such houses. Twelve 

(1910) 

Sixteen 
Statute declares such houses nuisancesgreater pen- 
statutes forbid keeping and leasing. alty if female 

under 14 



Sixteen 



Michigan 
Minnesota 

Mississinaj 
Mi .ouri 

Montana 



Sixteen 



Sixteen 



No Law 
No Law 



Fair Law Statute forbids keeping such houses. 

Statute declares such houses nuisances. 
Good LawStatute punished persons who keep such 

(1910) houses. Statute punishes persons who 
knowingly'let 

Statute forbids keeping such houses 
Good Law Lease voidable upon con^' *>on of tenant 
'(1911) -Own" punisnea .or knOW^i'ngly letting 
such houses. 
Statutes make it an offense to keep orSixteen; 
Good Law knowingly let house, tent, etc., for pros-greater pan- 

(1911) titution. alty if female 

under 14, 
still greater 
if under 10 

No statute on subject. Fourteen 

Keeping and leasing such houses forbid- 
den. Keeping such house within 100 yds. 
of church, etc , felony. Lease void upon 
conviction of tenant. 

C 4 T .^.^ ■^""oinp' and If^f^Jnw proViibited. 



Twelve 



Sixteen 



■I 



!lli 



^ 



Educational Charts. 



Methods of Control of Prostitution With a View to Eradica- 
tion of the Venereal Diseases. 

The education of the public, men and women, and even grow- 
ing boys and girls, in the facts concerning sex hygiene, and, eventu- 
ally, the prevalence, the seriousness, and the means of prevention 
of the social diseases, syphilis and gonococcus infection. 

Free distribution by the Federal and municipal authorities of 
informing literature, advising the people of the intimate association 
of prostitution and the social diseases. 

More than one state, very recently California, and even New 
York City in a restricted measure, have placed syphilis and gonococ- 
cus disease upon the list of compulsory reportable diseases. The 
physician is required to register and report the patient by number, 
not by name, thus compelling treatment and cure when possible, 
yet shielding him or her from publicity. 

Municipalities should furnish free laboratory diagnoses and free 
dispensary and ward treatment of the venereal diseases. 

In the long run these preventive measures would prove a 
paying investment. 

Every hospital should be required to maintain free wards for 
the treatment of syphilis and gonococcus infection. 

No method will succeed except the rigid enforcement of the 
laws preventing public prostitution. Almost every commonwealth 
provides for the punishment of the owners of property used for 
immoral purposes, of those keeping disorderly or immoral houses, 
and for those committing fornication and adultery. The observance 
of these laws will prevent very many of the instances of infection 
with syphilis and gonococcus disease. The contest can then be 
made purely upon a health basis and will succeed. 



273 



Educational Charts. 



Means of Prevention of Syphilis and Gonococcus Disease. 

Simple, Everyday Measures. 

The raising (by statute) of the age of consent to twenty-one 
j^^ears. 

The teaching of every young woman that the man who cannot 
oflFer an absokitely clean moral record is not likely to prove a safe 
husband and father from the standpoint of transmissible physical 
disease. 

The insistence of the marrying woman upon the submission 
of a certificate from her own physician vouching for the freedom 
of her prospective husband from transmissible disease, as far as 
such freedom can be ascertained. 

Such diseases should include syphilis, gonorrhea, tuberculosis, 
epilepsy, and alcoholism. 

The enactment of a law in every state, requiring such a cer- 
tificate of health from both parties contracting in marriage prior 
to the issuance of a license to marry. 

The intelligent education of the boy with respect to the invari- 
able infectiousness of the immoral woman, and the practical cer- 
tainty that, if infected, he will transmit his disease to others. 

The widest possible dissemination of the knowledge that indis- 
criminate kissing is one of the most prolific means of transmitting 
Venereal disease to innocent persons, especially to and from infants. 
.The aboHshment of the common drinking cup, and glass, and 
•the roller towel. 

The insistence by employers upon the furnishing at regular 
intervals of a physician's certificate of health by all cooks, house- 
, maids, nurse girls, wet nurses, hotel and restaurant waiters, and 
barbers. One large railroad system at the present time requires 
the examination at stated intervals of all its train and station 
restaurant employees, on pain of dismissal if the examination is 
refused. 



274 



Educational Charts. 



Reglementation of Prostitution. 

Methods That Have Been Tried and Found Wanting. 

The policy of silence and false modesty with respect to prosti- 
tution and its diseases has cost the world more dearly in terms 
of morbidity and mortality than any other influence or combination 
of influences. In terms of baby and child lives alone, it has paid 
its way with a ghastly toll. 

The European countries are one by one relinquishing police 
supervision and the medical examination of prostitutes on the 
ground that by these means and measures both prostitution and 
the spread of venereal disease have been furthered. 

The licensing of prostitutes has always, through the establish- 
ment of a false confidence, increased the danger rather than 
diminished the number of infections of those with whom these 
women associate. A public harlot may have been reinfected within 
ten minutes after receiving her certificate of freedom from venereal 
disease. As a matter of fact, modern methods of examination 
show that every prostitute presents distinct evidence of one or both 
of the two main venereal conditions, though she may appear well 
to the observer. Probably thorough examination would show the 
same state of affairs in the men who frequent the public houses. 

Spectacular raids have furnished much excitement and very 
Httle of real gain. The vice centers refill to the brim as soon as 
the police have relaxed their spasmodic exhibition of virtue and 
resumed their practice of protecting the prostitute for a definite 
money consideration. 

Segregation has proved to be of all attempts the most con- 
spicuous failure. It has resulted in an increase of prostitution 
and in the spread of syphilis and gonococcus disease. Hamburg 
and Bremen are the only large cities in Europe that continue to 
recognize this method as promising anything but the opposite of 
the goal toward which the effort is made. 



275 



Educational Charts. 



Reglementation Does Not Regulate. 

Vice Commission of Minneapolis — "The position, enforcement 
of law against prostitution, is unassailable." 

Lecour of Paris — ^'Prostitution is increasing in Paris in spite 
of the strictest regulation." 

Seligman — "An astounding condition of corruption among 
police officials and direct complicity between the chief of police 
and houses of ill fame." 

Van Ijsselstein — "I saw that the attendance at the public 
houses increased as soon as the report spread that I was in charge 
of the examinations." 

Neisser — "The methods actually in use for diminishing the 
evils of prostitution cannot be considered effective." 

Blaschko — "In Berlin, in spite of regulation, 20 per cent 
of the men between 20 and 30 years are infected each year with 
gonorrhea." 

Mireuel — "The more regulated prostitution there is in a country 
the more prostitution of every kind will develop." 

Morrow — "This system (reglementation) has proved to be 
defective as a sanitary scheme." 



276 



Educational Charts. 



Segregation does not Segregate. 

There is no large European city except Hamburg and Bremen 
in which segregation now exists as an official measure. 

Prostitutes in Europe. 



Total number 


Paris 


Vienna 


Berlin 


Police estimate, 


45,000 


30,000 


30,000 


Registered and regulated, 


6,000 


3.063 


2,016 



Brieux says, "(The Girl) These beastly men give you their 
foul diseases and it's me they stick in prison. It's a bit thick, that is." 

All prostitutes, clandestine and public, have acute or chronic 
gonorrhea very shortly after entering their life of prostitution. 
Modem methods of examination show that almost 100 per cent 
of prostitutes have syphilis. Segregation does not rid them of 
contagious disease. 

Government Commissions have reported against the continu- 
ance of reglementation, including segregation, in England, France, 
Germany, Scandinavia, Denmark, Belgium and Italy. 

Vice Commission of Chicago — "Constant and persistant repres- 
sion of prostitution the immediate method: absolute annihilation 
the ultimate ideal." 



277 



Educational Charts. 



OCCURRENCE OF VENEREAL DISEASES FOR THE AMERICAN 
ARMY IN THE UNITED STATES EXCLUDING (ALASKA) AS 
COMPARED WITH ALL OTHER DISEASES, FOR THE 
SAME PERIOD, 1907-1911. 

' ■ • Ratios peb 1000 op Mean Strength* 

Vbabs 



Venereal Diseases. 



All Diseases, excluding Vene- 
real Diseases. 



1907 


149.20 


1908. 


155.17 


1909 


151.36 


1910 


137.98 


1911 


145.29 



735.80 
704.66 
598.79 
523.66 
534.28 



♦Pigurei furnished by the War Department 



278 



Educational Charts. 



OCCURRENCE OF VENEREAL DISEASE IN THE AMERICAN ARMY, 

1907-1911 INCLUSIVE, AS COMPARED WITH THE OTHER 

INFECTIOUS DISEASES, EXCLUDING VACCINIA 

AND INCLUDING TUBERCULOSIS; AND ALL 

DISEASES FOR THE SAME PERIOD. 

Ratios per 1000 op Mean Strength 

Years Venereal Diseases Infectious Diseases All Diseases Ex- 

ExcLUDiNQ Vaccinia cludinq Venereal 

AND Including Tuber- 
culosis 



1907 


172.91 


188.17 


753.33 


1908 


169.91 


170.86 


720.77 


1909 


169.61 


135.35 


621.95 


1910 


154.91 


153.11 


652.03 


1911 


163.49 


167.44 


654.48 



^Excess of admissions deducted to show cases, each column. 
Figures furnished by the War Department 



279 



Educational Charts. 



RATIO OF INCIDENCE OF VENEREAL DISEASES PER 1000 OF 
MEAN STRENGTH. 
AMERICAN ARMY.* 







1902-1911. 






I'babs 


Syphilis 


Chancroids 


GONOREHBA 


Total 


1902 


23.53 


33.59 


110.97 


168.08 


1903 


24.93 


33.71 


100.06 


158.70 


1904 


26.95 


29,42 


99.52 


155.89 


1905 


28.63 


31.37 


115.99 


175.99 


1906 


25.46 


35.43 


113.48 


174.37 


1907 


24.55 


40.89 


107.47 


172.91 


1908 


22.31 


29.74 


117.86 


169.91 


1909 


24.75 


28.55 


116.31 


169.61 


1910 


24.66 


29.43 


100.82 


154.91 


1911 


40.13 


32.85 


90.52 


163.49 



^Figures furnished by the War Department 



I 



^ 



Educational Charts, 



CONTRASTED RATES OF INCIDENCE OF VENEREAL DISEASE IN 
THE ARMIES OF THE WORLD. PER 1000 OF MEAN 
STRENGTH.* 
1909-1911. 

Years Syphilis Chancroids Gonorrhea Total 



American Army 

(total enlisted) 1911 

American Army 

Home Stations 1911 

British 1910 

French (France) .... 1909 

Prussian 1909 

Bavarian 1909 

Austro-Hungarian.. 1910 

Spanish 1909 

Russian 1909 

Japanese 1909 

Portuguese 1909 



40.13 



32.85 



90.52 



(a) Not tabulated separately 
♦Figures furnished by the War Department 



163.49 



36.37 


23.35 


85.37 


145.29 


36.8 


31.5 


(a) 


68.3 


16.18 


5.15 


1.71 


23.04 


12.8 


4.7 


1.8 


19.3 


10.3 


13.0 


1.5 


14.8 


30.1 


16.7 


8.4 


65.2 


37.44 


16.12 


40.11 


93.67 


25.3 


15.3 


7.3 


47.9 


10.55 


6.77 


7.69 


25.01 


76.37 


9.15 


(a) 


85.52 



281 



i 



Educational Charts. 




The Gonococcus. 

The gonococcus is the sole and only cause of gonococcus 
disease. It is a coffee bean shaped little germ, very virulent, and 
very difficult to destroy by ordinary means. 

It is found in all the discharges of the disease, and, owing 
to the fact that it lodges deep within the mucous membrane, it 
may persist within the body for many years. 

The gonococcus has been found within the urethra, the uterus, 
the ovaries, tubes, the urinary bladder, the peritoneum, in the eye, 
in the joints, the tendons, in the heart's blood, in the heart valves, 
and in abscesses throughout the body. 

As long as the gonococci remain alive in a person, he or she 
may spread contagion, even though no symptoms of the disease 
are present. 

The gonococcus is never found in a healthy person. 



i 



Educational Charts. 



The Nature of Gonococcus Infection. 

In all its forms gonococcus disease is a contagion in the sense 
of being transmissible by contact from one person to another. It 
is more widespread and constant in its distribution than any other 
known disease. 

While certain of its manifestations are local, especially when 
it takes the form of gonorrhea of the urethra, or of the eye, none 
the less it is a blood infection and a systemic disease, and the 
gonococcus can frequently be grown from the blood of the patient. 

In its usual form (urethral gonorrhea) it is acquired through 
illicit sex intercourse. Very frequently it is transmitted in wedlock 
by supposedly cured husbands to innocent wives. 

In the form of gonorrheal inflammation of the genito-urinary 
passages it attacks the mucous membranes, first the superficial 
layers, then the deeper, and tends to spread by continuity wherever 
the discharges make their way. 

In the male, even with the best care, the acute disease usually 
lasts about six weeks before cure can be expected. 

In the female the course of the disease is so variable that no 
rule for its duration can be laid down. Women and female children 
are very difficult to cure owing to the tendency of the inflammation 
to spread upward to the internal organs (uterus, tubes, etc.). 

In the form of gonorrheal inflammation of the eye (ophthal- 
mia) the infection runs a brief, virulent course, and often destroys 
the sight. ...,.'..} 

When the disease appears as a septicemia (blood poisoning) it 
often attacks the heart, and proves fatal as the result of malignant 
valvular heart disease. 



^3 



Educational Charts. 



Gonococcus Infection. 

Methods of Transmission. 

Gonococcus disease is transmitted through the spread of the 
causal germ from one person to another, either through illicit 
intercourse, or in wedlock, or through the handling of articles 
of daily use. 

Even though the discharges from a gonococcus inflammation 
may have dried, as on clothing, and though considerable time may 
have passed, the gonococci may still Hve and prove virulent. 

Many children and many innocent women harbor gonococcus 
infection and unknowingly spread the disease. There are many 
instances on record of a single child starting an epidemic of 
fonorrhea in private families and in hospital wards, especially 
among little girl children. 

Any and all of the discharges from a gonococcus inflammation 
are contagious. Thus gonococci carried to the eye, nose, mouth, 
vagina, or rectum, cause the disease in that cavity. 

There is no exaggeration in the statement that soon or late 
all prostitutes, clandestine and public, become infected with 
gonococcus disease, and most of them with syphilis. Recent blood 
tests show that nearly loo per cent, of the public prostitutes have 
both diseases in latent or outspoken form. 



Educational Charts, 



Gonococcus Disease. 

Maternal Transmission. 

Gonococcus disease is not transmitted by heredity in the strict 
meaning of the term. The majority of infants infected contract 
gonorrhea of the eye during their passage through the birth canal of 
the mother. More than one-fifth of all the permanently blind in the 
country have lost their sight as the result of contact with the 
infectious maternal discharges. 

Not infrequently little children, especially little girls, are 
afflicted with gonococcus disease as the result of using bed linen, 
towels, clothing, and sometimes even soap, that have been used 
by an infected mother or father. 

Not infrequently a wife is infected by her husband and yet is 
not aware of the nature of her ailment. Such a woman may inno- 
cently, and in many instances has ignorantly infected her own 
child or others with whom she has come in contact. 

Latent gonococcus disease shows a marked tendency to 
become active when the pregnant woman nears the birth of her 
child. The time that presents the gravest danger to the infant 
finds the latter a ready object for attack by the enemy of women 
and children, namely gonococcus infection. 



^5 



Educational Charts. 

Gonococcus Disease, 
Distribution and Frequency. 

There is no infectious disease that compares in frequency 
with gonococcus infection. 

There are approximately 500,000 public prostitutes constantly 
in the United States, all of whom are infected sooner or later and 
constantly reinfected with gonococcus disease. 

It is estimated here and abroad that considerably over 50 
per cent, of our young men and boys the country over contract 
gonococcus disease. This estimate is very conservative. Of the 
case histories in one large representative city hospital, the house 
cases gave 49.9 per cent, of the males over 21 years of age admitting 
gonorrheal infection in their past history, 10.9 per cent, as having 
been infected with syphilis. The dispensary (not venereal) gave 
41.5 per cent, freely admitting gonorrhea, 9.94 per cent, syphilis. 

The children's wards in the hospitals are seldom free for long 
at a time from epidemics of gonorrhea among little girls. 

Approximately one-seventh of all the blind are cases of 
gonorrheal ophthalmia. 

The records of the surgical work in hospitals would indicate 
that there are constantly no fewer than a million and a half 
innocent American women, the victims of gonococcus disease con- 
tracted from their husbands, many of whom were supposedly 
cured of former infections. 

"For the navy and marine corps," writes Surgeon Gates, "the 
admissions to the sick list for gonorrhea since 1906 have stood 
first in point of frequency with from 2,085 to 3,015 cases, but 
these figures greatly under estimate its prevalence, for there was 
no record of patients not actually disabled." "The figures for 1909 
show an increase to 5,861." 

In the Public Health and Marine Hospital service in the past 
20 years were treated 117,336 cases. of gonorrhea, with an annual 
average of 4,889 cases. 

Lieutenant-Colonel Kean of the Army says, "We have swiftly 
retrograded until at present, and for more than a decade, the 
American Army has maintained a shameful preeminence in this 
respect (venereal infection) over the army at home of any of the 
great powers." 

The rate of gonococcus infections per 1,000 mean strength in 
the Army was 90.52 in 191 1. That of all other infectious diseases, 
excluding venereal, was only 167.44'. 

.286 



Educational Charts. 



Gonorrhea in Large Cities Like New York. 

The Committee of Seven appointed by the Medical Society of 
the County of New York in 1901 to investigate venereal morbidity 
in New York City sent out circular letters to nearly five thousand 
practicing physicians in Greater New York. 

Six hundred and seventy-eight physicians, or about one in 
seven to whom the circular was addressed, forwarded statistics of 
venereal diseases treated in their private practice during the year 
1900. The total number of cases reported by these physicians was 
23,196 — 15,960 cases of gonorrhea and 7,200 cases of syphiHs. 
No cases of chancroid were included. 

In 37 dispensaries there were collected records of 14,649 
cases of gonorrhea and 7,607 cases of syphilis — a total of 22,256 
treated during the year. There were 9,452 cases grouped under 
venereal diseases, but in which the records did not indicate clearly 
the distinction between gonorrhea and syphiHs. 

Only a few of the general hospitals were investigated, but in 
these there were collected records of 9,731 cases under titles indi- 
cating their venereal origin. These, with the cases reported in 
practice and collected from dispensary records, total up to 41,439. 

On the basis of these incomiplete statistics, it was computed 
by the committee that over 200,000 cases of venereal disease were 
treated in private practice and in public institutions in New York 
during 1900. This did not include 18,000 cases of gonorrhea and 
syphiHs inspected and treated in the Merchants' Marine Hospital 
Service and Dispensary of this city the same year. 

In a census taken from the medical histories of the John 
Hopkins' Hospital it was found that 49.9 per cent, of all male 
patients over 21 years of age admitted having had gonorrhea. 



•287 



Educational Charts, 



Gonococcus Disease in the Country Towns. 

Gonococcus disease is rapidly spreading through the country 
towns from the centers of prostitution in the great cities. Wherever 
a boy or young man is within easy access of the city, he is also 
within easy reach of gonococcus infection. In many instances he 
carries that disease into a clean home. 

From many directions are coming appeals to safeguard the 
country boy and girl who are leaving their homes to work in the 
city and town. Physicians practicing in some of these centers see 
as many cases of gonococcus disease in proportion to the opportunity 
of exposure, as are seen in the city communities. 

The high schools in town and country are furnishing an 
increasing number of boys and girls with loose moral habits and 
the resulting venereal diseases. 

Innocent women in country districts suffer just as severely 
from gonococcus disease as if they lived in municipal centers. 
Their husbands visit the cities and frequently bring home venereal 
disease. 

Gonorrhea in women is given every name from "the whites" 
to "cancer." Any active, vaginal discharge in the otherwise 
healthy woman should be considered by the family physician with 
respect to the likelihood of its being a gonorrheal infection. 



Educational Charts. 



Gonorrhea in the U. S. Army, igio. 

Surgeon Generars Report. 

The report of the Surgeon-General of the United States Army 
for 1910 gives the following figures: "The admission rate of 
venereal diseases to the hospital was, for the year 1909, 196.99 per 
1,000 for the entire army. In the army of Cuba, it was 203.64; in 
Hawaii, 225.84; in Porto Rico, 250.44; in the Philippines, 301.85 
(290.29 for the white troops and 418.46 for the colored troops)." 
The report says that "one-sixth of the total number of admissions 
to the hospitals was for venereal infection." This is significant 
in view of the fact that, excluding admission for injuries, acci- 
dents, poisons, wounds, etc., there are over sixty different diseases 
enumerated among the causes of admission. 

"Over one-third of the number of days lost was incurred 
not in the line of duty, but due almost entirely to venereal diseases.'* 



iSQ 



Educational Charts, 



Gonococcus Disease. 

U. S. Navy. 

The report of the Surgeon-General of the United States Navy 
for 1910 shows: "The general admission rate for all venereal 
infections for 1909 was 199.17 per thousand, while that for primary 
ihfectiotis was 160.40." 

'/Venereal disease has resulted in a truly serious situation, 
there being over 100 primary admissions for this class of affections 
during the past quarter of 19 10, with an average complement of 
I'SSi • (a yearly admission rate of 217 per 1,000, among young 
men who have but recently entered the service free from such 
disease)/' : 

In the Atlantic fleet the total number admitted for venereal 
diseases was 2,914; the total number admitted for general infec- 
tious, diseases, 939. These figures represent one case of venereal 
diseas.e for every four men. 

Gonorrhea and syphilis comprised nearly one-fourth of the 
entire number of admissions to the hospitals. The great majority of 
these cases were of gonococcus infection. 



296 



Educational Charts. 



Complications and Sequelae of Gonococcus Disease. 

In the male the most frequent compHcation is the spreading 
of the infection to the seminal passages and sacs, to the bladder, 
and to the kidneys. 

In the female there may be the same spreading to the bladder 
and kidneys. Far more frequent and serious is the involvement 
of the Fallopian tubes, and ovaries in an abscess process, which 
often gives rise to peritonitis and death. A large percentage of 
the operations on the abdomens of innocent women are necessitated 
by gonococcus infection. 

Closure of the seminal passages in the male, and of the, tubes 
in the female, from gonococcus disease, will account for from .50-75 
per cent, of all the steriHty in married life. . ,. • 

In the child the great majority of cases of infantile blindness 
are due to infection of the eyes either from its own gonorrheal 
pus, or from another individual. The percentage of cases of 
ophthalmia neonatorum due to gonorrhea of the parent varies- with 
different authorities from 20 to 90 per cent. • 

Stricture of the urinary passages in the male and female forms 
one of the frequent sequelae of the local urethral disease. 

In both sexes the joints, especially the large joints, suffer with 
great frequency in gonococcus disease. The condition is very 
difficult to treat and usually results in a crippled joint. 

The heart and the blood and lymph circulations are occasionally, 
the seat of the main infection by the gonococcus. Fatal blood 
poisoning and malignant valvular disease form the usual picture in 
such a case. 



.^i 



Educational Charts. 



Gonococcus Disease and Sterility. 

Gronorrhea is a more potent factor in depopulating communities 
than syphilis. From 45 to 50 per cent, of women infected with 
gonorrhea are rendered sterile. 

It is estimated that the husband is directly responsible for 
about 20 to 25 per cent, of sterility through his own personal 
damage from the disease, which often renders him incapable of 
procreation. Moreover, though the husband may not be sterile 
himself, he may infect his wife and render her sterile. He is in 
this way ultimately responsible for about 70-75 per cent, of all 
the steriHty in married life, which is not of choice, but of incapacity. 
Lier-Ascher's careful statistics place this proportion at 71.2 
per cent. 



Educational Charts. 



Gonococcus Disease. 

Results Upon the Child. 

The training of fathers and mothers must begin in their own 
young childhood, or they and their children may suffer in terms 
of gonococcus disease to a greater or less extent, as the direct 
result of their parents* ignorance or neglect. 

More than one-fifth of all the totally blind in asylums are there 
due to gonococcus infection at birth. The public has refused to 
recognize the imminence and need of publishing the danger from 
the most common of the social diseases. 

Very many infants die each year as the result of gonococcus 
disease in the mother. No records are kept, and the social diseases 
are officially non-existent, though gonorrhea is one of the most active 
causes of abortion, stillbirth, and sterility of one or both parents. 

Our institutions are full of fatherless or motherless children, 
the harvest of ignorance, more than of shame. Gonococcus disease 
has destroyed many a home, usually by robbing it of the mother. 



293 



Educational Charts. 



Gonococcus Disease: Results Upon Women. 

As the result of gonococcus infection women are today a race 
of needlessly chronic invalids, largely owing to their ignorance of 
the type of man that is fit to marry, and to beget children. 

Women furnish the great bulk of material for surgical opera- 
tions. The vast number of the operations upon the maternal organs 
of women are necessitated by gonococcus infection of innocent 
wives by guilty men or by ignorant, careless boys. 

Many sterile women are childless owing to the husband*s 
former (supposedly cured) gonococcus infection, which may have 
first rendered him unable to beget children, and too often has 
brought the same unsexing sorrow to his wife through disease 
of the sex organs or through the surgeon's knife. 

Many of the stillbirths and abortions and many infant deaths 
are due to the infection of innocent wives by infected husbands 
often apparently cured of a former gonorrhea. 



m 



Educational Charts. 



Gonococcus Disease: Results Upon the Man and Boy. 

More than 50 per cent, of all boys and men in our cities 
become infected with gonococcus disease. Nearly all who are 
exposed are sooner or later infected, many on the occasion of the 
first exposure. 

Many of those infected are never cured owing to their own 
carelessness or the impossibility of cure in certain cases. 

All persons infected with gonococcus disease are for a longer 
or shorter period disseminators of the contagion. The time required 
for cure varies from weeks to years. 

Many men infect their innocent wives after their own sup- 
posed cure. Many transmit their disease to their children through 
the mother, causing blind children, abortions, and deaths. 

Many boys are rendered physically incapable as the result of 
infection with gonococcus disease. 

The hospitals are full of the consequences of gonococcus 
disease treated under misleading names, such as blindness, eye 
inflammations, inflammatory rheumatism, disease of the sex organs, 
sterility, and certain forms of heart and kidney disease. 

Gonococcus inflammation of the epididymis temporarily and 
often permanently closes the seminal tubes in men, and in the same 
manner blocks the tubes that transmit the ovum in women. 



29s 



Educational Charts. 



Gonococcus Disease: Results Upon the Home. 

With the habit of loose morals comes to almost every immoral 
girl gonococcus disease. With the latter infection usually develops 
a spirit of carelessness of the safety of the public. Illegitimate 
motherhood falls to the lot of many of these untaught girls. As 
the result tiny babies lose their sight. The rich and poor contribute 
to the army of the unfortunate rather than sinning. 

The misery of bearing a dead child or one doomed to die is 
too often the experience of the girl who has not been taught the 
need of choosing a physically and morally clean mate, with a record 
as clean in the past as her own. 

During the twenty years, 1890- 1910, there were in America 
nearly 450,000 divorces, of which about 23 per cent, grew out of 
the knowledge that the husband was untrue to the home, and 
presumably, therefore, infected with gonococcus disease. There is 
no basis for estimating how many of the wives were actually 
infected by these men. 

Probably more than 50 per cent, of all sterile marriages are 
childless owing to gonococcus infection of the husband or, through 
him, of the wife. 

When full knowledge is in possession of the women and girls 
of the home there will be fewer marriages without thorough 
acquaintance with the present and past physical and moral history 
of the male applicant for a wife. 

Gonococcus disease and its effects can be uprooted from 
American homes only through a wide-awake, intelligently equipped, 
fearless young womanhood, that will refuse to marry a man in 
the absence of a physician's certificate as to his physical integrity, 
as far as ascertainable. 



296 



Educational Charts. 



Gonococcus Disease: Results Upon the Municipality. 

In the large cities the public hospital is the only one that 
freely admits patients with gonococcus disease. Most of these 
large city institutions treat annually about i,ooo men and about 
the same number of women for the acute forms of the social 
diseases. The wards are constantly full of the chronic forms as 
they appear in the eye, the genito-urinary organs, the heart, the 
brain, and the joints. Until complete cure, there is no time in 
which the victim is altogether free from danger of infecting the 
public. 

No one can estimate the number of cases of gonococcus dis- 
ease constantly spreading infection in a large city. Through 
wedlock, through the waiter's napkin, the towel, through eating 
utensils, through soiled linen, and other articles of frequent use, 
infections occur daily of innocent folk who are oftentimes ignorant 
of the existence of these contagions, and themselves become 
unwitting distributors of disease. 

No one can attempt to estimate the amount of private and 
municipal sorrow and physical distress carried into the clean sec- 
tions of every city from the hundreds of recognized and tolerated 
houses of ill fame, from the thousands of public and clandestinely 
immoral and infectious unfortunates, acting through and by means 
of ignorant or regardless boys and men. 

There is no method of computing the loss of time, intellectual 
productivity, and wages, sacrificed owing to the incapacity of men 
and boys from gonococcus disease. The great majority lose 
several weeks of efficiency during their lifetime, and many are 
incapacitated altogether for a season, and some permanently. 

Every large city pays the price of virtually legalizing the 
spread of these contagions in its large incidence of infant and 
adult disease, also in its death roll, in the maintenance of its 
charitable institutions, and in the loss of efficiency and productivity 
©n the part of its young men. 



297 



Educational Charts, 



Gonococcus Disease: Results Upon the Country at Large. 

Through marriage with the upward of half (50 per cent.) of 
15,000,000 American young men who have been infected (many 
in young boyhood) before maturity with gonococcus disease, very 
many of our 15,000,000 innocent girls are infected, and brought 
to the surgeon's table within the first two years of married life. 

According to official figures, about the equivalent of a regiment 
of men are constantly incapacitated by gonorrhea in the United 
States Army. The percentage is not very different in the Navy. 
In the factories and mills of America nearly every man has (or has 
had at some time) gonococcus disease. 

In America, as in France and England, the public death toll 
is rapidly approaching and promises soon to pass the birth record. 
We will then have the same figures to report with a steadily dimin- 
ishing population. From at least one section of the country already 
this is true. Alcohol and the social diseases appear to be active 
among the causes. 

The blind asylums, the foundling institutions, the hospitals, 
the lowered and wasted money-producing ability of the wage 
earners, the stillbirths, and abortions, the operations on women, the 
cost of medical treatment of both sexes, the childless homes — all 
these are contributory features of the tax levied upon America by 
the double standard of moral and physical health for the two sexes 
and its consequence in the form of gonococcus disease. 



Educational Charts. 



Gonococcus Disease: Treatment. 

There is no disease that so insistently demands thorough, 
skillful treatment, if cure is to be obtained. 

There is no disease that is so unintelligently handled. It is. 
estimated that from 25 to 50 per cent, of all cases of gonorrhea 
are treated by quacks, many other cases are prescribed for in 
drug stores, many are not treated at all. 

Few if any hospitals other than naval and military institutions 
admit venereal cases for treatment. In most of the Common- 
wealths the public General hospital is the only one. This rule 
holds, with few exceptions, the country over. 

A case of gonococcus disease requires careful medical oversight 
until it is actually cured. This will require several (on an average 
six) weeks of treatment by a competent physician. Many cases 
are for one reason and another never cured. 

In most forms of the disease a case that is promptly and 
eflfectually treated promises cure, in the male sex. A case that is 
not cured invariably results in permanent damage to the individual, 
and is a constant menace to the public. 



299 



Educational Charts. 



Prognosis of Gonococcus Disease. 

When all is said and done a cure cannot be promised in the 
given case of gonorrhea in the male. Many cases are undoubtedly 
cured; many instances are certainly not. Under persistent, intelli- 
gent treatment the ordinary case of gonorrhea is usually free from 
symptoms in about six weeks. 

Very many men and boys harbor the gonococcus within the 
body for months and years after a cure seems to have been 
obtained. Often the only sign of persistent latent disease is the 
infection of an innocent wife, and through her of the child. 

It is probably safe to say that the average case of gonorrhea 
in the male is not cured, but passes into a latent or chronic stage 
which leaves the victim a focus threatening danger to the com- 
munity. This result is due to our lack of an effective treatment, 
as well as to the failure of the patient to persist in the measures 
advised by the physician until the latter is certain of cure. 

The prognosis in the female is very different from that in the 
male. The vast number of abdominal operations for pus-tubes in 
women testify to the regularity of an extension of the gonococcus 
infection to the uterus, the tubes, and the ovaries, and to a cure, if 
obtained at all, usually through an unsexing surgical operation. 



306 



Educational Charts. 



*^r'\ *'*- 'A M'vf.j t;%*>^...'^..^_ ^ 




The Spirochaeta Pallida 

Is a minute spiral germ. During its life it moves actively. 
Either before or after its death, it can easily be demonstrated in the 
discharge or scrapings from a syphilitic sore. 

Its introduction into a second person, unless destroyed by the 
protective fluids of the body, results in the syphilitic infection of 
that person. 

The spirochaeta is destroyed by the ordinary antiseptics, and 
by mercury, and by ^alvarsan ('*6o6"), when it can be reached and 
attacked by these drugs. Only a limited number of spirochsetae 
are killed, however, by any treatment known to date. It is almost 
certain that the drugs used at present produce their improvement 
in bodily conditions by killing many spirochaetae and by driving 
others to the internal organs. 

The spirochaeta pallida can cause syphilis in a human being if 
transferred while still alive to the blood or lymph circulation, either 
by contact with a broken body surface, or through the fetal circu- 
lation before birth. 



301 



Educational Charts. 



The Nature of Syphilis. 

Syphilis is a systemic infection, which usually makes its 
presence known by means of a chancre, or initial sore. The infec- 
tion is usually acquired by men in illicit sex intercourse ; by women, 
an at least 75 per cent, of cases, in wedlock, through infection by 
guilty husbands ; by children usually through heredity. 

Syphilis is not merely a venereal disease. Infections of women 
and children, except in the case of prostitutes, usually occur with 
the victims both ignorant and innocent. 

Syphilis runs through three more or less well defined stages, 
called primary, secondary, and tertiary. In all of these the causal 
germ, the spirochasta pallida, is present in the blood and in the 
tissues of the body, and during the entire progress of the disease 
the syphilitic subject is a focus for the spread of infection. 

The primary and secondary stages are the actively contagious 
and infectious periods. They are also the periods marked by the 
most evident symptoms. The tertiary stage is an even more 
destructive one to the patient, but is the stage of chronic slow 
change, in which the signs and symptoms may be for the most 
part in abeyance, at least for a considerable time. It is especially 
the stage in which brain and spinal cord changes take place. 

Syphilis is probably the cause of more deaths indirectly and 
directly than any other disease. It often results in diseased blood 
vessels, diseased organs, diseased and lost special senses (sight, 
hearing), apoplexies, paralysis, skin manifestations. In its inherited 
forms it costs thousands of child lives every year. 



■dt>^ 



Educational Charts, 



Syphilis. 

Methods of Transmission. 

All of the discharges from the lesions (sores) of syphilis 
contain the virus of the disease. When these discharges come in 
contact with open or broken surfaces on the bodies of other people, 
the latter are likely to develop the disease. 

The most frequent methods of transmitting syphilis are through 
sex intercourse, through the saHva (kissing), through the common 
drinking cup and towel, and through such articles of daily use as 
the cigar, cigarette, the pipe, eating utensils, handkerchiefs, the 
mouthpiece of a musical instrument, etc. A baby may infect its 
nurse, or exceptionally even its mother, while at the breast. 

Syphilis is usually transmitted to the male by a clandestine 
or public prostitute, who has first been infected by a man. About 
85 to 100 per cent, of all public prostitutes have active or latent 
syphilis. 

When women, other than clandestine and public prostitutes, 
are infected with syphilis it is usually by immoral, infected hus- 
bands. It has been estimated that from 60 to 80 per cent, of all 
syphilitic wom^en are of this type. As there are approximately 
500,000 public prostitutes in the United States (presumably all 
syphilitic) and many more clandestine prostitutes, a rough calcula- 
tion may be made of the innocent women infected in this way. 

In France, official figures show that 25,000 deaths were recorded 
as due to hereditary syphilis in one recent year. The figures in 
the United States if officially gathered would probably not be lower 
per the same number of the population. Hereditary syphilis may 
be conferred upon the child by either the father or the mother or 
both. 

Syphilis may be transmitted at least to the second generation. 
Fortunately few syphilitic infants survive. 



303 



Educational Charts. 

Syphilis. 
Distribution and Frequency. 

"I am reproached with seeing syphiHs everywhere." — Ricord. 

General Van R. Hofif, U. S. A. Medical Corps, informs us that 
73,382 cases of syphilis occurred among the white troops in the 
Civil War. 

In the Public Health and Marine Hospital Service about 
i,3CX>,ooo patients have been treated in the past 20 years. Of these 
106,090 were cases of syphilis, 4,420 constituting the average 
per year. 

Blaschko estimates that one in ten of all the population in 
Berlin is or has been syphilitic. 

Both here and abroad it has been shown by laboratory tests 
(Wassermann) for syphilis that of 100 public women (prostitutes) 
examined, from 80 to 90 are syphilitic. Only a few showed open 
signs of the disease (Dreyer and Meirowsky). Le Pileur found 
74 per cent, of 431 registered prostitutes syphilitic. Finger of 
Vienna has found 25 per cent, of all prostitutes in an actively 
infectious syphilitic state. This would mean the presence of about 
500,000 syphilitic immoral women in this country alone, and at 
least an equal number of innocent syphilitic victims of their 
husbands' disease. 

A conservative estimate would probably place the number of 
syphilitics in the United States among the millions. Fournier esti- 
mates that one-seventh of the male population of Paris is syphilitic. 
In many of the European villages 25 per cent, of the population is 
innocently infected, prostitution being in some districts unknown. 
Citron states that 10 per cent, of all the wet nurses in Dresden 
are syphilitic. 

A considerable number of physicians are annually infected in 
their medical and surgical work. One prominent genito-urinary 
specialist (Morrow) writes, "More than 50 cases of professional 
syphilis have come under my observation." 

There are 200,000 insane persons in the United States, costing 
$50,000,000 annually for maintenance, of whom very many owe their 
mental unbalance to syphilis. In addition syphilis causes many of 
the cases of idiocy and feeble-mindedness, marasmus, apoplexy, 
epilepsy, clubfeet, hare-lip, deafmutism, blindness, locomotor ataxia, 
and paresis. These cases are not usually classified as syphilitic, 
though victims of the disease. 

304 



Educational Charts. 



Syphilis in the Country Towns. 

Syphilis in the country is the same disease as in the city. It is 
frequently carried home from the city brothels. The country form 
of syphilis is even more serious, because it is usually not recognized, 
and is therefore allowed to go without treatment or cure. 

The old feeling that the country is as clean and pure as the 
fresh air of outdoors is no longer justified by the facts of the case. 
Few country boys fail to visit the city, and, unless safeguarded, 
they visit the brothels, and bring syphilis or gonococcus disease to 
their homes. 

Careful statistics are not obtainable, but all indications point 
to as high a percentage of syphilitic infections among the boys of 
small cities and towns and villages as among those of the large 
cities. 

"Rural syphilis in Russia is first and foremost a disease of 
the innocent and spreads generally throughout the mass of the 
people without distinction of age or sex. The infant soon after birth 
is often infected by a kiss from one of its parents. The grand- 
parents may in the same way contract the disease from eating and 
drinking utensils. In the rural districts more than 70 per cent, 
of the cases of syphilis are innocently contracted." — Tarnowsky. 

SyphiHs in the rural districts of America is also a disease of 
the innocent, who are infected by the boys who have brought their 
curse home. 



305 



Educational Charts, 



Syphilis. 

Complications and Sequelae. 

Syphilis may and does attack every tissue and organ in the 
body. It shows a special predilection for the circulatory system 
(heart and blood vessels) and for the central nervous system 
(brain and spinal cord). 

Most of the so-called complications and sequelae of syphilis 
are merely the manifestations of its virulent attack upon one and 
another of the internal organs or systems of the body. Thus 
valvular and muscular heart disease, kidney (Bright's) disease, 
and many stomach and intestinal ailments, are purely and simply 
syphilis of the heart, kidney, stomach, intestines, or of the blood 
vessels that supply these organs. 

Among the most frequent complications of syphilis is tuber- 
culosis, engrafted upon a system the resisting powers of which have 
already been undermined and destroyed by a toxin that seems to 
furnish conditions peculiarly attractive to and favorable to the 
growth of the tubercle bacillus. 

Locomotor ataxia and paresis are sequelae of syphilis in the 
sense that they are the all too frequent results of the influence of 
its toxin upon the central nervous system. About 75 to 85 per cent, 
of all cases of locomotor ataxia find their origin in syphilis, as 
against 90 to 100 per cent, of all cases of paresis. 

The most serious sequelae of the disease are manifested in the 
child of the syphilitic individual. Hereditary syphilis will account 
for a great percentage of the abortions, stillbirths, and infant deaths, 
for many blind children, and for a host of the feeble-minded, idiots, 
degenerates, and epileptics. 



306 



Educational Charts. 



Hereditary Syphilis. 

Case I. 

A healthy father and a hereditary syphilitic mother. Four 
children born, all with rachitis. One an idiot. — Gilbert and Fournier. 

Case II. 

A healthy man and a hereditary syphilitic wife. Four preg- 
nancies as follows: One miscarriage, two stillbirths, the last child 
born a monster {double hare Up, absence of soft palate, deformed 
ears, fingers and toes like claws, malformation of joints, etc.) — 
Gaubet and Fournier. 

Case III. 

A healthy wife and a hereditary syphilitic husband. Six chil- 
dren dead (five by abortion), iive children afflicted with brain 
trouble, one child backward, two children have malformation of 
the teeth. — Etienne and Fournier. 

Case IV. 

A healthy man and a hereditary syphilitic wife. Four mis- 
carriages in succession without evident reason; then a syphilitic 
child. — Pinard and Fournier, 

Case V. 

A healthy wife and a hereditary syphilitic husband. Of eleven 
pregnancies eight terminated in stillborn children. Three survive, 
one a hystero-epileptic, one tuberculous, and one a victim of 
exophthalmic goitre. — Tarnowsky and Fournier. 

Total. 

Hereditary syphilis in one of parents. Of 8i pregnancies there 
were 28 abortions, 31 premature dead children, 7 deaths shortly 
after birth — a percentage of deaths of 59. — Fournier. 



307 



Educational Charts. 

Syphilis. 

Results Upon the Child. 

Thousands of children of syphilitic parentage die before, dur- 
ing, or shortly after birth. Only a few survive the first year, and 
most of these fail to reach adult years. Fournier noted 125 still- 
births in 148 pregnancies (74 per cent.) in syphilitic women in the 
St. Louis Hospital. 

When children are born wath syphilis their arteries and veins 
are often as hard and fibrous as those of old people. They are 
often feeble-minded, imbeciles, or idiots. In 78 idiots Lippmann 
secured a positive Wassermann (syphiHs) test in 12.5 per cent. 
In another series of 47 cases of congenital idiocy syphiHs was 
demonstrated in 40.2 per cent. In 44 more clinical cases syphilis 
was present in 10 per cent. A group in Dalldorf gave a syphiHtic 
percentage of 13.27 per cent. Grouping all of these Lippmann 
found evidences of syphilis in 33.8 per cent, of congenital idiots. 

Malformations of the body, of the head (hydrocephalus, etc.) 
of the limbs, of the organs of the special senses (eye, ear, etc.), of 
the nose, of the palate (cleft), of the lip (hare), of the hands and 
feet (clubbed), are very frequently evidences of hereditary syphiHs. 
In 21 cases of juvenile locomotor ataxia (a rare condition) Laisser 
found a clear history of syphiHs in 17. 

"I have seen ninety women, infected by their husbands, preg- 
nant in the first year of their syphilis. Fifty of these pregnancies 
have terminated in abortion or in stillborn children; thirty-eight 
in the birth of children that have promptly died ; two only survived. 
And this hecatom.b of children, where have I observed it? Not 
in the hospital, not in the lower social grade, but in my private 
practice among young wives enjoying all the advantages of hygiene 
and fortune." — Fournier. 

Gigantism, dwarfing, malformation of the bones, of the spine, 
of the heart, permanent infantilism of mind and body, and rachitic 
changes in the bones, are other effects of hereditary syphilis. 
Pinard (quoted by Fournier) says: "In all my practice I have 
never observed a case of rickets without demonstrating a syphiHtic 
heredity." 

One of the causes of the birth of monsters, headless, armless, 
legless, even heartless bodies, is syphiHs. 



308 



Educational Charts. 



Syphilis. 

Results Upon the Woman and Girl. 

Syphilis in the father or mother may doom the girl to death 
before birth, to death shortly after birth, or to the life of a sorry 
mental, moral, and physical cripple. 

Syphilis in the wife all too frequently results from syphilis in 
the husband, unsuspected and untreated in the wife until long after 
the period in which the disease would be actively combatted in the 
man. During this time of danger to herself and others the woman 
is usually left ignorant of her state. 

Syphilis in the wife and mother usually means a series of 
miscarriages or stillbirths, or a syphilitic child. It may easily 
mean the infection of her circle of friends and relatives. 

Her infection with syphilis will in the future mean to the 
clean, intelligent wife the almost certain duplicity of her husband. 
The home cannot withstand the shock of this knowledge in more 
than an exceptional instance. 

Syphilis will run in her the same destructive course as in the 
man, unless promptly and thoroughly treated to the point of cure. 
It will entail even greater difficulties with regard to social relations, 
and business employment. 

The same question as to the propriety of marriage subsequent 
to an apparently cured syphilis presents itself to the woman and 
must be a matter of grave concern. She cannot be sure she will not 
bear a syphilitic child. 



309 



Educational Charts. 



Syphilis. 

Results Upon the Man and Boy. 

Syphilis requires three or more years of treatment, involving 
the expenditure of time and money. 

Neither the man nor the boy is helped by the knowledge that 
he constitutes a focus of danger to his family, friends, and the com- 
munity. He is certain either to become morbidly fearful, or callous 
to a hurtful degree. 

Syphilis may prove in the given individual a mild, easily con- 
trolled infection or a wickedly destructive and resistant disease. 
In the first instance it is not likely to interfere seriously with his 
livelihood, provided he is intelligent enough to place himself in 
competent hands for treatment. A virulent infection may incapaci- 
tate him for work, and so disfigure him as to disqualify him from 
business competition with his fellows. This rule will apply to 
rich and poor alike. 

Syphilis should prevent marriage at least until years have 
passed subsequent to the dissappearance of symptoms and the 
cessation of treatment by the physician. It is a grave question 
whether a man once syphilitic should ever marry. He must assume 
the full responsibility of the decision between single life and the 
risk of a syphilitic child. No physician can take this load from him. 

The appearance of syphilis in the home is almost certain to 
rupture family ties, through loss of respect and affection. The 
birth of a syphilitic child is almost invariably the signal for fear 
of exposure on the part of the husband and of paralyzing terror 
and dread on the side of the wife and mother. Neither of these 
mental states tends to the permanence of the home as an institution. 

Syphilis usually enters a boy's life, at a critical, formative 
period, in which instead of being able to husband and use the 
powers that Nature has given him, he is compelled to withdraw 
from society, retrench in money and strength, and confess that h^ 
has begun life radically wrong. 

Syphilis forces the necessity upon the man of looking forward 
to the possibility of locomotor ataxia or general paralysis of the 
insane. 



310 



Educational Charts. 



Syphilis. 

Results Upon the Home. 

Syphilis prevents the founding of many homes owing to the 
fact that it is usually contracted during the young man's home- 
earning period. The disease involves a moral as well as a money 
expenditure that not infrequently renders impossible the otherwise 
easily attained object. 

Syphilis destroys children, and therefore soon renders the 
home an impossible institution. 

Syphilis of the innocent woman in the vast majority of 
instances (75 per cent.) convicts the husband of marital infidelity 
and of deliberately risking his wife's life and health, as well as 
insuring the doom of her children. The home cannot survive upon 
the basis of such infamy. 

If every syphilitic young man were to err on the safe side 
and forego marriage and the hope of children, the number of new 
homes would be annually divided by ten, and there would still be 
many that never should have been founded, since to start them on 
their way means to bring them to certain dissolution. 

Syphilis is man's shame and woman's curse. Until women are 
placed upon an equal moral and physical footing with men syphilis 
will continue to force her still lower in her position as the drudge 
of the home and as the real white slave. The partnership of a 
voluntary syphilitic male and an ignorantly, innocently syphilitic 
woman does not constitute a home, rather mocks at its effigy. 



3ii 



Educational Charts. 



Syphilis. 

Results Upon the Municipality. 

In America syphilis has at present no official existence. None 
the less it exacts an enormous toll in wages and lives and in public 
health. The economic significance of the deaths and funerals of 
thousands of syphilitic infants is beyond estimation for a given 
community. 

Soon or late the municipality must provide at considerable 
expense free diagnosis and thorough, decent ward treatment of 
syphilitics in public hospitals devoted to the purpose, or in wards 
opened in the hospitals now in existence. This measure must 
necessarily precede the closing of the houses of prostitution if 
public benefit is to be derived instead of harm. 

At the present rate of spread and increase it will not require 
many years to infect an entire community. This has actually 
occurred in a number of European villages and towns. 

The cost in dollars and cents of the maintenance of the insti- 
tutions that house the victims of the secondary and indirect 
influences of syphilis would include such items as the care of the 
feeble-minded, the degenerate (criminal and otherwise), the insane, 
the paralytic, the crippled, the indigent (through physical or mental 
incapacity), the epileptic, and in many instances the tuberculous. 

The loss in productive power to a municipality of hundreds of 
child lives destroyed through abortion or stillbirth or through death 
in early infancy (together amounting to many thousands of dollars, 
self-multiplying into a never-ending chain), cannot be calculated. 



312 



Educational Charts. 



Syphilis. 

Results Upon the Country at Large. 

The death rate is rapidly approaching the birth rate in many 
sections of the United States. Among the most active causes 
would seem to be syphilis and gonococcus disease, side by side with 
alcohol, tobacco, and the other drug poisons. 

America will depend for her future as a world-power upon 
the health of her citizens. The very existence of a posterity is 
being threatened by preventable influences, of which syphilis is, 
perhaps, the most potent at this moment. 

If, at the present time, there are actually several million syphi- 
litics in this country, each and every one constituting a focus for 
the spread of the disease, it can easily be estimated how long or 
rather how brief a time will be required for the infection of the 
remainder of the 100,000,000 that comprise the entire population. 
In the meantime, the source of a clean supply is being tainted or 
cut off altogether. 

If every healthy adult life were estimated as being worth from 
$500 to $1,000 per year in actual money value, the infection and 
incapacity of between 3,000,000 and 10,000,000 individuals would 
total an amazing annual waste of earning ability. 

America cannot continue to ignore the existence of syphilis 
as a national peril without facing the inevitable speedy loss of her 
present prestige as a world influence, and without in due course 
being confronted by the certainty of disappearance from the roll 
of nations. 



313 



Educational Charts, 



Syphilis. 

Treatment 

Syphilis requires under the most modern methods and in the 
most skilful hands, a treatment that covers many months (as a 
rule several years) if cure is to be attained. 

Syphilis, when ineffectually treated, presents little if any less 
likelihood of serious involvement of the internal organs and of the 
central nervous system than when altogether neglected and not 
treated at all. 

Acquired syphilis, except in occasional instances, has always 
proved amenable to treatment by drugs and hygiene, in so far as 
the removal of active symptoms have been concerned. 

Hereditary syphilis has often yielded to intelligent treatment 
to this same extent of the removal of subjective symptoms. 

Neither the acquired nor the hereditary form of syphilis has 
found a satisfactory or prompt method of cure. Under the old 
regime (mercury and the iodids), at least three years of active 
medication are insisted upon as necessary to a cure. Under the 
newer method of introducing arsenical preparations (salvarsan, 
"606," and neo-salvarsan) into the general circulation, it would 
already appear that we have no more certain prospect of cure than 
heretofore. Many members of the medical profession are skeptical 
with regard to the final curability of syphilis. 



314 



Educational Charts. 



Syphilis. 

Prognosis. 

The final outcome of a given case of syphilis cannot be stated 
in advance. It is, perhaps, fair to say that many instances of 
syphilis have apparently remained free from signs of the disease 
after thorough treatment continued over long periods (years) of 
time. It is equally true that very many cases have relapsed, and 
many more have developed brain and spinal cord lesions in spite 
of supposedly thorough and effectual treatment. 

The modern methods of treatment of syphilis (salvarsan and 
neo-salvarsan) have not materially altered the prognosis of the 
disease as just outlined. They have apparently only secured a 
more prompt disappearance of the symptoms. 

Reports from many directions would indicate the lack of cer- 
tainty and perhaps even the impossibihty of cure of hereditary 
syphilis. Authorities, such as Finger, of Vienna, are constantly 
demonstrating the presence of the spirochseta pallida and a positive 
Wassermann blood reaction in cases of hereditary infection, which 
several years before had been considered cured. The same results 
have been obtained with both the old and the new, and with the 
combined methods of treatment. 

In view of the foregoing facts, the individual will do well to 
hesitate in characterizing syphilis as a certainly curable disease. 
As long as syphilis is present in a man or woman, he or she con- 
stitutes a focus of danger to the public, and a menace to his or 
her offspring. 



315 



Educational Charts, 



Mortality of Syphilis. 



"Syphilis is one of the most important causes shortening human 
life, and in bringing about mortal diseases." — Metchnikoff. 

Fifteen per cent, of the deaths among members of the Insurance 
Society of Kaleva were traceable to syphiHs. — Runeberg. 

In the famihes of 87 children under treatment for syphiHs, 
there were 39 stillbirths and 25 deaths, all attributable to syphilis. 
Thirteen died while under observation. Thus, out of 187 stillborn 
or unborn, 113 died from syphilis transmitted from the parents.— 
Still. 

"Some one has said that syphilis kills the young by hecatombs, 
and the word is no exaggeration. It remains to be said that it 
kills them at various ages. Official statistics of public charity give a 
total of 458 children dead in 996 births from syphilitic women in 
the hospitals of Paris. Infantile mortality 40%." — Fournier. 

"Syphilis frequently exterminates in germ the posterity of 

families. In some it makes the work complete. Polymortality of 

children in a family has become in our day a recognized sign of 
syphilis." — Fournier. 

I have noted in thirty-four pregnancies, in families in which 
one of the pair (most often the father) had hereditary syphilis, 
eleven instances of abortion, three instances of premature confine- 
ment with death of the fetus, four cases of death soon after birth, 
mortahty 53 per cent. — Fournier. 

The mortality of syphilis in America is impossible of computa- 
tion ex:cept by estimate. There are no official records. It may be 
stated, however, that nearly all aneurysms of the aorta, nearly all 
the cases of paresis (general paralysis of the insane), 75-85 per 
cent, of locomotor ataxia, many apoplexies, brain tumors, obscure 
liver and kidney diseases, very many bone diseases, occasional 
instances of lung disease (miscalled tuberculosis), and a vast army 
of deaths in childhood and infancy, fully comparable to the 
statistics abroad, are attributable to hereditary and acquired syphilis. 



316 



( Nel 



braska 

Nevada No Law 

New 
Hampshire 

New Jersey 

New Mexico See Laws 

New York 

N. Carolina 
N. Dakota 
Ohio 

Oklahoma 

Oregon 
Pennsylvania 



/ljOOv. . - .. 

(1911) ^. ' ., 

Using leasing, or sub-leittng such housesEighteen if 

(1911) forbidden. Lease voidable upon convict-fern- le was 

Good Law tion of Tenant. Citizens may enjoinpnviously 



(1911) owner and keeper, etc. 



chaste,other- 
wise fifteen 



Statutes forbid keeping and letting such 
houses. Within certain limit and on cer- Fourteen 



tarn streets. 
Statute gives cities power to suppress. No 
Good Law State law forbidding such houses. 
(1911) 

Statute gives cities power to suppres. 
Fair Law No State law forbidding such houj^j. 
(1910) 



Poor Law 

(1897) 



Sixteen 

Sixteen 
greater pen- 
alty if female 
under 12 
Fourteen, 
greater pen- 
alty if female 
under 10 

Statute forbids keeping and leasing such 
Good Law houses. Lease voidable upon conviction Eighteen 
(1910) oftenant. Special laws on prostitution in 
tenement houses. 



No Statute on subject. 



Fair Law 
(1909) 



Fair Law 
(1910) 



Good LawNo statute on subject. 
(1911) 

Statutes forbid keepkng and letting. 



Fourteen; 
greater en- 
alty if female 
under 10 
Eighteen 

Statutes forbid keeping and letting. Nui- Sixteen; 
sance abated on conviction of owner. greater pen- 
alty if female 
under 12 
Sixteenwhen 
female was 
previously 
chaste, other 
wise 14 

Good LawStatute forbids setting up or keeping Sixteen 
(1911) houses of ill-fame. 

Statute forbids keeping or letting of com-Sixteenwhen 
Good Law mon bawdy houses, houses of prostitu-female was 



Good Law Statute forbids keeping and letting. 
(1910) 



(1911) 



chaste;if un- 
chaste deft, 
found guilty 



Rhode Island 






S. Carolina 


No Law 




S. Dakota 




Poor Law 

(1909) 


Tennessee 




PoorLaw 
See Code 
(1901) 



Texas 

Utah 
Vermont 

Virginia 

Washington 

W. Virginia 

Wisconsin 
Wyoming 



Houses of ill fame are declared nuisance 
Good Law Penalty named for maintaining anf^ ' 
(1910) ing. Lease voidable on convic«-- . . 

ant. 
No Statute on subi" 



Statutes forbid keeping and leasing. 



Fair Law 
(1910) 



Fourteen 
Sixteen; 
greater pen- 
alty if female 
under 10 

Houses of ill-fame declared nuisances. Eighteen;ex- 
Nuisance abated on conviction of owner. cept when fe- 
Lease voidable on conviction oftenant. male was un- 

chaste 

Good LawStatute punishes owner or lessee for keep- Fifteen 
(1911) ing. 

Good LawStatute forbids keeping such houses. Eighteen 

(1911) 
Good LawStatute forbids keeping such houses. Sixteen 

(1911) 

Statute forbids keeping such houses. Fourteen 



Houses of ill-fame are deemed nuisances. Eighteen; 
Good Law Keeping and leasing such houses forbid-when female 
(1909) den. Lease voidable upon conviction ofwas chaste, 
tenant. greater pen- 

alties under 
15 and 10 
Statute forbids keeping and leasing; each 
Good Law day house is so used is separate oflFense. Fourteen 
(1911) 

Good LawStatute forbids keeping, setting up or Fourteen 
(1911) leasing 
(1910) Statute forbids keeping or knowingly let- 

Fair Law ting. Eighteen 



•■< 



4 



J 



Index 



Abortions, 202. 

Acquired traits and diseases, trans- 
mission of, 58. 

Age of Consent, 171, 274. 

Alcohol, 64, 179, 183, 248, 268. 

Alcohol and tobacco, 249. 

Alcohol and physical disease, 200, 268. 

Ameba, The, 128. 

Anatomy, 83, 121. 

Aristolochia, 80, 175. 

Arnold, Sir Edwin, 109. 

Asexualization, 67, 69, 183, 268. 

Army data, 23, 261, 262, 265, 266, 278 
to 281, 289. 

B 

Barrymore, Miss Ethel, 40. 
Bibliography, for the Teacher, 172. 
Bibliography, Sex Hygiene, 94. 
Boy's Knowledge of the Girl, 114, 

123. 
By whom are the boy and girl to 

be taught? 127, 133. 
Boy's standard for the Girl, 192. 
Boy and his need, The, 30. 
Boy as diagnostician, 35. 
Brieux, 16, 138. 
Brooks, Phillips, 129. 



Cell, The single, 54, 55. 

Cell bodies, development of, 57. 

Cell division, 168. 

Charts, educational, 243 to 316. 

Certificate of health, 203, 235. 

Child teaching, lack of, 75. 

Childless marriages, 36, 227, 228. 

Chromatic filaments, 56. 

Chromosomes, 54, 57. 

Circumcision, 113. 

Clandestine prostitution, 270. 

Cleanliness, 103, 116. 

Conception, 11, 197. 

Control of prostitution, 273. 

Cost of the social diseases, 14, 26, 

259- 
Curability of the social diseases, 218, 

"219, 228, 229. 



Darwin, Charles R., 176. 

Darwin, Francis, 162. 

Defectives, heredity and care of, 65, 
66, 67, 69. 

Dietary, The, 105, 117, 120. 

Divorce and marriage statistics, 207. 

Dominance, Law of, 60, 61. 

Double standard of moral and physi- 
cal health, 47, 91, 108. 

Dress, Hygiene of, 107, 

Dutchman's pipe, 80, 175. 

Dysmenorrhea, 99. 



Earthworm, 54. 

Economic relations of the social 

diseases, 11. 
Educational charts, 243 to 316. 
Eggs (ova), 55, 132, 177. 
Environment, Influence of, 62.. 
Epidemic of syphilis, 16. 
Epididymis, 122, 124. 
Eradication of the social diseases, 

231. 
Estimated number of prostitutes, 15. 
Exhibits, 28, 160. 
Expenditure estimate chart, 259. 

F 
Fertilization of the ovum, 177, 179. 
Fleig, C, 65. 

Fowls, Law of dominance in, 60. 
Fournier, 13. 



Germcell, 55. 

Girl, The, and her need, 38, 39. 

Girls, Census of, 13. 

Girl's, The, right to equal knowledge, 

46. 
Girl's, The, knowledge of the Boy, 

loi, 123, 198. 
Gonococcus, The, 20, 222, 278, 239. 
Gonococcus disease, 20, 222, 225, 282 

to 300. 
Group teaching, 131. 
H 
Hamery, J. L., 149. 
Health certificate, 203. 



317 



Index. 



Heredity, 50, 53, 179, 195. 

Heredity charts, 12, 62, 244, 245, 246 

to 251. 
Heredity, Nature's laws of, 61, 195, 

244, 245. 
History of the social diseases, 17. 
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 65. 
Home, Social diseases and the, 22. 
Horses, Law of dominance in, 61. 
How are the boy and girl to be 

taught? 127, 139. 
Hybridization in wheat, 63. 
Hygiene of the Boy, 114. 
Hygiene of the Girl, 102, 45, 
Hygiene of the dietary, 105. 
Hygiene of dress, 107. 



li I were a Girl, 191. 

Ignorance of the average girl on sex 

matters, 42. 
Illicit intercourse and disease, 36. 
Illegitimate parenthood, 202. 
Immigration and the social diseases, 

26. 
Immorality and disease, relation of, 

188, 201. 
Immorality among boys, 35. 
Inbreeding, 163. 

Infant deaths, 11, 12, 63, 68, 214, 221. 
Infant infections, 22, 23. 
Influence, 47. 
Infection by infants, 23. 
Innocent infections, 19, 20, 214, 226, 

227. 
Insanity and neurasthenia chart, 247, 

267. 
Intelligence of the flowers, 162. 
Intelligent human breeding, 69. 
International Congress on Hygiene, 

27, 28, 243. 



Lack of teaching, 31. 

Law of dominance (Mendel), 59. 

Law of modification, 58. 

Law of variation, 58. 

Law of mutation (DeVries), 58. 

Laws and legislation, 28, 172. 

Laws covering the social diseases, 

2ZZ, 240. 
Laitinen, 64. 
Lead poisoning, 67, 68. 
Lessons from nature, 75. 
Leucorrhea, 99. 
Licensed prostitution, 206. 



Literature, 94, 169, 171, 172. 
Lotos blossom, 31. 



M 

Materlinck, Maurice, 162. 

Male selfishness, 113. 

Marriage of diseased. Prevention of, 

69. 
Marriage and the sex tie, 85. 
Marriage and divorce statistics, 207. 
Masturbation, 82. 
McCaskey, 25. 
Menopause, The, 100, 
Menstrual period, The, 97, 196. 
Method of control, 27, 273. 
Method of teaching, 252 to 258. 
Mill, John Stuart, 39. 
Mucous patches of syphilis, 215. 

N 
Nature observations, 75. 
Nature's laws of heredity, 61, 244, 

245- 
Navy data, 263, 264, 290. 
Negro, the, and venereal disease, 272. 
Neurasthenia chart, 246. 
Nucleolus, 56, 
Nucleus, 56. 



Observation methods, 75. 
Origin of the social diseases, 17. 
Ovum {tg^), 55, 132, 177- 

P 
Parenthood, Idea of, in the child, 76, 

84. 
Paretic dementia (paresis), 217. 
Phillips Brooks, 129. 
Philadelphia General Hospital, 25, 

195. 
Physical disease and alcohol, 200. 
Physical disease and immorality, 188, 

201. 
Physical need of sex indulgence. Lack 

of, 199. 
Physical unhygiene, 50. 
Police supervision of vice, 29. 
Prevention of the social diseases, 274. 
Prostitution laws. Chart of, 274- 
Prostitution, Methods of dealing 

with, 149, 150. 
Prostitutes, 14, 271. 
Prostitutes, public, 14, 15. 
Prostitutes, clandestine, 15, 16, 270. 
Prostitutes, male, 271. 



318 



Index. 



Prostitutes, estimated number of pub- 
lic, 15, 109, 187. 
Prostitutes, Methods of control of, 

273- 
Puberty, 80, 117, 120, 129, 130, 196, 



Reglementation, 28, 206, 235, 275, 276. 
Reporting the social diseases, 69, 70. 
Responsibility of the boy for the girl, 

21. 
Results of ignorance, 46. 



Statistics, Day and Sunday school, 

144. 
Starfish, 54. 
Sterility, 36, 227, 228. 
Stillbirths, 11, 202. 
Syphilis, 68, 212, 302, 303 to 316. 
Syphilis, Infectious nature of, 18, 19. 
Syphilis and tuberculosis, relation of, 

19. 
Syphilis, Curability of, 68, 218. 
Syphilis, Epidemic of, 16. 
Syphilis, heredity of, 68. 



Salvarsan, 218. 

Sanitary measures, 239. 

Segregation, 235, 277. 

Self-abuse, 82. 

Self-control, 182, 183. 

Semen, 177, 183, 185, 198. 

Seminal emissions, y^f 183. 

Sex awakening, 44, y^, 79. 

Sex anatomy, 83. 

Sex control, in the boy, 182, 183. 

Sex desire, 87, 185, 197. 

Sex distinction, 75. 

Sex hygiene bibliography, 94. 

Sex indulgence, Lack of physical 
need of, 199. 

Sex organs, Care of, 185. 

Sex function, 83. 

Sex intercourse, 85, 186, 187, 199. 

Sex phenomena, 44, y^, 79. 

Single cell, 55, 128. ^ 

Smegma, 80. 

Social conditions influencing prosti- 
tution, 13, 238, 260. 

Social diseases, history and origin, 17, 
212. 

Social diseases, economic relations of, 
II. 

Social diseases among boys, 35. 

Spermatozoa, 177, 185, igiS. 

Spirochseta pallida, 213, 239, 301. 



Talk with Girls, 190. 

Talk with Men and Boys, 174. 

Teacher, Requirements in the, 159, 

1 60. 
Teaching methods, 161, 252 to 258. 
Teaching outline, 147, 167. 
Temptation of the boy, 34. 
Testicles, The, 122, 124. 
Thomson, J. Arthur, 54, 
Training of the Teacher, 158. 
Transmission cf acquired traits and 

diseases, 58, 179. 
Tuberculosis, 62, 63, 64. 



U 



Unhygiene, 50. 



Vallisneria spiralis, 112, 176. 

Van Beneden, 56. 

Vas deferens, The, 122, 124. 

Van Vogel, 63. 

Vice Commissions, 236. 

Voltaire, 12. 

W 

Weichselbaum, Anton, 64. 

When are the boy and girl to be 

taught? 127. 
Woman's power and opportunity, 48. 



310 



WALTER H BEAVER 
34 So 16th St, 

PHILA. 



XKR 3 WIS 



1 



